That Awkward Moment
by LusciousNesha
Summary: Don't you just hate meddlesome friends? They mean well, but then things like this happen: When Sam and Mercedes' friends try to force them to have a fling with each other over a fun weekend at a mutual friend's house, things can get a little messy... especially if feelings accidentally get worked into the mix.
1. How This Sht Got Started

**How This Sh*t First Got Started**

Mercedes awoke and blinked a few times in the bright sunlight of the room that she slept in the previous night. She pulled something from being wrapped around her chest and it snaked around her waist, instead. She froze. Sam... She jumped up and turned to look at the blond man sleeping next to her, his hand, now tightly gripping her waist, like he didn't want her to get away (even though he was clearly still out cold). She wiped her hand down her face and forcefully removed the hand to rush herself into the bathroom that they were sharing (the only one without a working lock in the entire house!)

She was not stupid or blind – all of this mess had been a setup. God, was she really _that _pitiful? Did her friends think so little of her current life that they felt the need to try to orchestrate her having some male company? She sat on the toilet, finished up, flushed, and splashed her face with some water before looking into the mirror. She gasped at the sight! Damn it, Sam! She pulled her nightie aside and saw a trail of hickies, along the side of her neck, shoulders, chest and clavicle. Wth? She groaned and shook her head, starting the shower up. Was her bathrobe around? She peeked into the bedroom and saw Sam, sitting up in the bed, with his head rested on his knees.

Quietly, she entered the room to grab her bathrobe, and when he looked up at her and offered a tired, lazy smile, she tried to force one back (but failed and ended up just kind of squinting at him in confusion). He tilted his head and softly asked, "Is everything alright?"

"Sure," she told him and disappeared back into the bathroom. Sam let out a deep, frustrated sigh and climbed out of the bed. He left the room, clad in only his pajama bottoms and a tousled head of hair. He went into the kitchen, where a few of their friends were already awake and making or eating breakfast.

Noah Puckerman saw the huge red blemish on his friend's pale chest and leaned forward, "Evans! Did our little boy become a young man, last night?" He asked.

"Don't be a dick, Puck," Sam replied, turning red in the face as he went to help himself to a bowl of cereal. No, he hadn't lost his virginity last night, but he was afraid that maybe he did lose something else. Things were not supposed to have gone the way that they had with Mercedes Jones.

_ Mercedes and Sam were both adult virgins... both with NOSY ASS meddling friends! Sam was unsure whose side had the idea, but when a mutual friend – Sugar Motta announced that she would be hosting an event which she called "The Game On Weekend," Sam somehow allowed his friends to convince him to attend. He barely knew Sugar. They hadn't gone to school together and the only reason that he knew of her was because her father was loaded and always buying one thing or another. _

_But, the way that Puck and Mike described how the event was going to be sounded like a damned good time and Sam was pretty excited about having a relaxation period for fun and games. "Oh, but you can't go stag, because single people depress Sugar," Mike had said._

_ Then, seeing Sam's disappointed face, Puck offered, "But, cheer up – the ladies have a single friend that they're going to bring along for you to meet. She's lonely and in need of some good male company, preferably the affectionate kind, as opposed to the friendly kind. They give her all kinds of praises, and get this – she's carrying around her V card, as well!"_

_Sam lifted an eyebrow at Puck and said, "If this is your way of setting me up on a blind date with a vampire, I'll have you know that I've written three vampire survival encyclopedias – graphic novel style. You won't make a vampire outta me!" Puck chuckled and shook his head._

"_And she's actually into silly, corny nerd shit, like that," Mike told him. _

"_Remember how you said that at this point, you'd lose your virginity to just about anybody?" Puck asked him, "Quinn has the perfect person! Or, at least she says that she does." Sam stared at Puck, incredulously. He hardly liked being set up on regular dates, much less a "get laid" date. But, Puck kept talking, "This girl is supposedly pretty hot and she's just trying to get it out of her system, just like you."_

"_I'm not..." Sam started._

"_But, why not do it at a time when you have someone ready and willing and hot to do it for you. She's not a hoe, either. She's a virgin too and has a great reputation and a good head on her shoulders... That's what Tina said, right?" Puck asked Mike, who in turn nodded his head._

_Sam sighed and shook his head, now it didn't seem like such a good idea. He knew what this was about – his friends wanted to help him lose his virginity. They had tried this before, on several occasions and it was always a terrible ending. Sam had given up on trying to lose it, himself. Hell, if it happened, it happened, and when it happened, it wouldn't be because his friends set him up with some lonely virgin._

"_We'll see," Sam said. They already knew that he would come, whether he really wanted to or not. He would come for even the chance to possibly have somebody to spend a little time with. Sam was a bit of a hopeless romantic and that characteristic did not fit well with his prolonged solitude. Maybe a romantic/fun weekend with a stranger wouldn't be so bad, if she was down for a quick picker upper, he wouldn't feel so bad when things didn't go the way that he usually hoped they would when he sort of hooked up with random women. Sexless flings had become a sporadic thing for him; however, he had to admit, he was unsure if he was ready for a sex inclusive fling... But, he would never know unless he went for it. "Sure, if she's interested. Why not?" _

_ Mercedes sighed as she signed off of her online account, not quite ready to have to face another day in the real world, but understanding the need for it; for example, she was hungry and fanfiction, while wholeheartedly fulfilling at times didn't stop the rumbling in her belly. She still had to get ready for this Game On Weekend that some of her friends from high school were putting together, as a "midway reunion." One of her old Glee club members, Sugar Motta would be hosting a weekend of fun and games for a group of friends that were close in school, as well as others that she knew from other schools. _

"_We'll have games and liquor, and I'm sure that much sex will occur... what could be more fun?" Santana Lopez, another good friend asked Mercedes when she said that she wasn't going to go. "Besides, we may have found a nerdy knight in shining armor to pop the young maiden's cherry, once and for all." Mercedes' face heated up with embarrassment as she grabbed Santana's arm and pulled her away from the few customers in the comic book store that Mercedes had gotten a part time job in. Santana laughed and asked, "Did I use the wrong terminology? That was some fairy tale stuff, huh? Sorry, I don't really know how the nerd thing works."_

"_Santana – first off... I don't need my cherry popped and second – this is not the place to be talking about some stuff like that. I work here!" Mercedes fussed. "I didn't want to go to this thing before, but that was the nail in the coffin, if you think that I'm gonna spend a weekend with a group of drunk crazy people who I didn't even get along with in school just so I can try to hookup with some random guy!"_

"_He isn't! Remember when we were in the Troubletones and we would square off against New Directions at competitions? This guy was in that group."_

"_Yeah, a few of Sugar's friends are," Mercedes answered._

"_He was like some kind of body roll magician. You have to remember him, it was only five years ago."_

"_Sam Evans?" Mercedes said, more excited than she intended to sound._

"_Aha! So I wasn't the only one whose lady parts were affected by that magic sex dance," Santana mused._

_Mercedes rolled her eyes and shook her head, "That has nothing to do with it. I know Sam. He's a regular here and he's working on his own amazing comic book that the owner allows him to sell here, because he believes in the potential."_

"_Oh, even better! You already know him, so the sex can happen sooner."_

"_Well... I don't actually know him. It's more like I see him a lot and sometimes I answer questions for him, like I tell him where Jacob is if he's looking for him or I ask him if he wants me to grab him a drink when I go to the break room while he's setting up his comics display..."_

"_You have a crush on him," Santana said._

"_I think he's very attractive and nice. He seems cool as hell, and all of these are reasons that I know that there is no way that I am hooking up with this man, any time soon."_

"_See there, Cedes? This is exactly why we want you to come have a good time. I don't know what happened to you, but every since graduation, you've become this person that nobody goddamned even knows. You have virtually no self esteem. I can't remember the last time that I heard you sing, and you are becoming more of a recluse than Susie Pepper!"_

"_What's wrong with Susie? She was a sweetheart," Mercedes said. Santana ignored it._

"_You don't have to marry the guy or even change your life around, but maybe getting your groove back will help you want to be a complete person again. You haven't been with a guy since you and Shane broke up in high school. That's been years."_

"_I tried the whole dating thing. Most of the time when a guy is interested in me, it's because he's curious about having sex with a big girl and I'm not here for that. I don't need a man to validate my life, Santana."_

"_No, you don't, but let's be real. We feel a little bit better about ourselves when some hot thing gives us a double take. You haven't felt that good about yourself in a while. Maybe you need a longer take. From what the guys say, this guy hasn't been involved with anyone in years, himself. The two of you are in the same boat, so you don't have to worry about feelings or issues or anything. Just meet up with him, so you can have a date for the weekend, enjoy yourself and you never have to deal with him again."_

"_And you all will leave me alone when it turns out to have been a huge burden and disaster for me, him and everyone else involved with the damned set up?" Mercedes asked._

"_We'll leave you alone, even if it goes smoothly and we have to say 'I told you so.' This ain't rocket science, Weezy. You got a shot to get you a little something-something, see old friends, have some drinks and be merry. Just come along for the Troubletones, if nobody else."_

"_Gah! Alright, if it means that after that weekend, you all will leave me alone about finding a man, going on a date and losing my virginity, I will be there, with a big fake ass smile on my face, pretending that there is something of interest around me." When the door to the store opened, Mercedes saw the blond head of hair enter and she ducked behind the rack that she was at._

"_Uh.. aren't you supposed to address the customer?"_

"_That's him!" Mercedes said and began to try to sneak away. Santana looked at the dorky but incredibly hot blond at the counter, looking around, wondering where the staff was and she nodded her head, once at him. He gave her a smile, but then something beyond her caught his attention and he hurriedly went towards it. Santana turned in just enough time to see him peek around the corner of a rack and catch Mercedes trying to scurry away._

"_Mercedes?" He called, curiously. She gasped and tripped and toppled to the floor. "Oh my God!" Sam said, and rushed to help her up. When Santana saw him helping her to stand and checking her scraped elbow, she quickly moved in to try to help her girl out. "What happened? You looked like you were running from someone..." He said, checking the store out to see if he saw any suspicious characters that he might need to school on not intimidating a lady. _

_Santana stormed up to them and said, "There you are! I saw you trying to dart away! Like I really was gonna miss dat ass flying by, no matter how low you got. Did you... did you fall? Damn, girl – you need to get some," Santana said. She smiled at Sam, who turned bright red at her comment, then said to Mercedes, "So, Cedes – I've caught you, so you don't get to duck out of the Game On Weekend. I hear that the guys even have a single friend that they want you to meet. It'll be fun and I'm not taking no for an answer!"_

_Sam blinked and looked at Mercedes, "Wait... you're going to that?" He asked._

"_I guess I have to..." Mercedes said through her teeth, glaring at Santana with dagger eyes._

_Sam laughed and said, "You're gonna think I'm pulling your leg, but... I'm the single friend. Some of my buddies from high school have me tagging along to this thing that their friend is throwing and I was told that I have no excuse not to be there, because apparently the hostess' friends were setting me up with one of their homegirls..." Mercedes' knees gave away and she stumbled, trying to catch herself before she looked like an even bigger fool._

"_You don't say," she said as he helped to steady her. _

_Santana collected her from his hold and told him, "That is great to hear! God, Wheezy, he's cute and everything! And you know him, so that means that there shouldn't be any holdups in you know, progress." _

_Mercedes shoulders sank. This entire situation was awkward as hell. "Sam, did you need help with anything. I didn't know that you had business here today."_

"_Oh, I just came by to drop something off to Jacob," he said. "But... have you had lunch, yet?" _

"_I don't get a lunch. I'm only working a partial day," she quickly said. He looked sad about that. "But, I get off at 3, if you'd like to do something.."_

"_I'd love to and it'd help break the ice for the inevitable awkward weekend that we'll have coming up," he said with a wink and handed her the envelope. "If you could, make sure that Jacob gets this, please?" When he left, Mercedes turned to glare at Santana._

"_He seemed happy about being your date. Yay!" Santana cheered, clapping her hands. "And from the looks of things, he's more than willing to knock them boots. Get ready for one wanky weekend, Lady."_

"_I should punch you in the mouth for putting us on the spot like that!" Mercedes snapped, but she was extremely glad that she and Sam were going to get together later._

_ Sam forced himself into his sneakers and grabbed his phone to check the time. He wanted to make sure that he got some errands out of the way before the weekend. If the weekend went well, he would be exhausted by Monday morning. If it went really well, he would be exhausted the next few days after Monday. Noah Puckerman and Mike Chang had convinced him that he should come with them to a party outside of town. They called it Game On Weekend. Supposedly, it was kinda like a game night, but for an entire weekend and with a bunch of hormonal young adults, as opposed to family. He wasn't really down for it, until of course, he realized that she would be his date._

_Sam smiled to himself at the thought of Miss Jones meeting him at the music store. He wanted to talk to her for a long time, but she always seemed so uninterested, not just in him, but in anyone. Her face lit up when she began to talk about the things that she enjoyed... and he always felt honored to witness it._

Mercedes came into the kitchen and pretty much everyone there noticed that Sam's face brightened, while she avoided glancing his way as she settled herself between Tina and Puck, "Morning, Folks!" She cheered and studied the different bowls and plates. "What are y'all eating?"

"Want me to fix you something?" Sam asked, with his tone a little bit weird. She couldn't place her finger on what was there and she couldn't help but to look up at him when he asked. His eyes were gazing at her, intently. She forced a smile and looked away, awkwardly, shaking her head. Tina studied her friend and her boyfriend's friend, then tried not to laugh as she found her pancakes hella interesting.

Santana came into the kitchen, next – dressed in an oversized tshirt and strutting, pleasantly. "What's the breakfast of champions for a badass bitch that made her little lady cum five times last night?"

"Perfect breakfast discussion!" Mercedes commented, breaking a few eggs to scramble. She glanced at Sam and he shyly looked away from her. She felt bad. What the hell was going on? They hadn't had sex, but they had fooled around and now, he was being all strange and she didn't know if she was ready for that kind of sh*t.

"And Britt and I are actually roomed up next to you and Lips McGee, so guess what kind of stuff I had to be exposed to after the two of you went to bed?" Santana asked, causing Sam to redden and Mercedes' nostrils to flare. "Fix me some of them eggs, Homegirl," Santana punctuated her statement and sat next to Sam, giving him a pat on the shoulder. He frowned and got up to put his empty bowl away.

He was sort of aware of the number of eyes pretending to not be on him as he made his way to Mercedes at the stove, scrambling eggs and he whispered something to her, that they couldn't hear, "Did I do something wrong?" he wondered. He thought that things went exceptionally well last night and that they might only get better.

"No. I just don't really like all of the meddling," she said, softly. She dared to make eye contact with him and almost melted all over the kitchen floor at the intense stare that he offered her. "You did everything right and you were perfect company last night..." Sam smiled gently and leaned down to kiss her on the lips, which killed her train of thought. _Damn it... everyone was staring. No one was even trying to hide it. _Mercedes pulled out of the kiss and turned her attention back to her breakfast. "You want yours scrambled, Santana?" She asked.

"Sure," her friend said with a smirk as Sam left the kitchen to get ready for the day.


	2. Let the Games Begin

_Just to clear up any confusion, in this story, the Troubletones and New Directions were not in the same school. So the known Troubletones were never at McKinley here, just because that's how I wanted to do this one. _

**Let the Games Begin!**

Welcome, Couples! Included on this program are your names and whom you will be lodging with during your stay for Game On Weekend at the Sugar Shack!

I hope that you all enjoy your time here and if you don't it's totally your fault for not being able to learn how to have fun and play games and be a good sport, like the cool people.

COUPLES:

Sugar Motta and Artie Abrams

Santana Lopez and Brittany S. Pierce

Mike Chang and Tina Cohen-Chang

Blaine Anderson and Kurt Hummel

Jesse St. James and Rachel Berry

Noah Puckerman and Quinn Fabray

Matt Rutherford and Lauren Zizes

Mercedes Jones and Sam Evans

**Games will include, but are not limited to: Twister, Clue, Monopoly, Poker, Go Fish (Because I still likes that shit), Pictionary, Charades. Darts, Ping Pong, Pool, Foosball, and outside games such as Chicken (in the pool), Tag Football, Paintball War, Watergun Fights (ooh, and water balloons, too), Hide and Seek (why not? Especially if we're drunk). Feel free to request games that you would like to play and be willing to be rejected if nobody else wants to...**

_**By the way, many of the games will be played under the stipulations of drinking, kissing, and/or stripping, for example – drinking monopoly or strip poker, or kissing Pictionary. Be prepared to kiss, and drink and maybe strip, depending on what I happen to pull out of my little hat.**_

_**Love SUGAR!**_

Sam laughed as he read the program, placing his bag in the spacious closet he was sharing with Mercedes. "Why are you laughing? Trust me, she's serious about every word on this thing," Mercedes told him. "I have known that girl since her family came to Lima."

"She seems... very odd. I still have no idea how she and Artie ever got together," Sam said placing the program down on the dresser.

"I think that they got together that time when the Troubletones and New Directions both stayed at the same hotel for regionals," Mercedes said and laughed, remembering that night. The two teams got together for an alliance against Vocal Adrenaline. "We all took all of Vocal Adrenaline's underwear and hid them, like we were damned kids at camp!" She laughed.

"Hey – that was _our_ idea. I ended up taking the blame for it and getting pulled from the competition, so that nobody else would get in trouble, but it had been a lovechild brainstorm of Puck, Mike and me. Then, Finn wanted to pull you ladies in too, I guess try to have it backfire against you if we got caught. But, I couldn't let that happen." He shrugged his shoulders and they headed for the living room, where everyone was supposed to meet for the "pre-games refreshments," which were composed of alcohol, fruits marinated in alcohol, meats marinated in alcohol, and a table of snacks. "Want a drink?" Sam asked.

"Not at 4:45 in the afternoon," she answered with a laugh, then asked, "So, you only know Sugar through Artie, huh?"

"Yeah. I mean, I know you from the store, but other than the two of you, the rest of them are all New Directions, right?"

"Rachel's boyfriend was actually in Vocal Adrenaline, though. And Quinn... well – she's a double agent," Mercedes said with a laugh.

"Why do you say that?" He asked her.

"Oh, Quinn went to school with us for a year, when she was pregnant and didn't really want all of her friends and stuff to know. She lived with me for a while, too," she said.

"Oh," he said and nodded. "Er... I didn't know all of that. I knew that she and Puck had a baby, but I had no idea that _you_ and Quinn were friends. That seems a little unlikely."

"Oh please, Quinn Fabray and I are like sisters in the dark. Of course, she's like the slightly older and much cooler sister and I'm the less attractive dorky sister..."

"Whoa!" he said and touched her chin, "Are you kidding? There's nothing _less _attractive about you. You two are attractive in different ways. She's attractive in this traditional and kinda boring way and you're attractive in this 'coolest girlfriend I never had' kinda way – which is truly the better way." She smiled. She'd never heard herself described that way before and she never would have expected it from him. Now, she kind of felt like they should have had a real conversation, sooner... or maybe he was simply being extra nice to her because they had been set up on this date thing. Her brain felt really confused, and it must have shown on her face, because he asked, "Do you have some kind of sci-fi trivia question in your head to ask me?"

She laughed at the question, but then answered, "No, but I am accepting them in the category of sci-fi romances and best couples," Mercedes joked.

"Anastasia Dualla and Billy Keikeya or Dualla and Lee?" He asked. She gave him the stink eye.

"How dare you, Sir? How dare you even think to ask me such an atrocious question! Billy was the most adorable thing to walk on that ship, aside from the love of my life, Gaeta, of course..." Sam made a face. He hadn't heard any ladies checking for Gaeta before, that he could remember. She went on to say, "And I felt like I connected so much with her, until she decided that she was going to leave behind her nerdy, sweet, innocent and so heavenly tall boyfriend in order to hook up with that self-righteous, pretentious piece of privileged, arrogant, unfaithful asswipe..."

Sam's eyes widened. "That's it, you're the girl of my dreams. Can we get some matching T-shirts? Oooh.. can they be those shirts that look like a fancy suit? Oh! Or shirts that look like the Tron suits?"

"I'd like a shirt with a cardboard box on it that has 'What's in the box?' printed on it." Sam laughed, pulled her to him with one hand and kissed her temple. Mercedes' eyebrow shot up, but he so casually pulled away and didn't apologize or fumble awkwardly that she didn't know what to think. _Think nothing. This is a casual encounter with a guy that you just so happen to like the crap out of... _Soon, the others started showing up as well.

The games were probably staged, as somehow, they ended up being one of the couples who set under the kissing rules. The two of them, Sugar and Artie, Tina and Mike and Blaine and Kurt ended up playing with kisses instead of drinks (randomly selected, _sure_). Sam was pretty good at ping pong, so he didn't get many kisses... though the ones that he did get were spectacular. But, when couple's strip poker began, Sam ended up being the one to play the hand and Mercedes ended up being the one to have to strip. The way that Sugar set it up, there were four couples to each table, the one stripping was not permitted to help the one playing the hand... and he honestly was a terrible cards player.

Santana was gladly beating him, and at first, it wasn't a problem. Mercedes typically wore several layers of clothes – even when it was pretty hot out. But, she got a little nervous, and it was clear very uncomfortable when she had to lose her pants. She was sitting next to him, in a pair of boy shorts, a spaghetti strap undershirt and bra with socks when she asked, "Shouldn't this damned game be over with, by now?"Sam frowned and looked at her, ready to fold.

Jesse St. James, the boyfriend of one of Sam's friends, Rachel, said, "At least you still have some clothes on. Rachel has me a pair of boxers away from showing everyone in the room everything that I have to offer her. He shrugged his shoulders and took a sip of his drink.

Rachel laughed at herself and admitted, "I'm not much of a card player."

At the next table, Matt Rutherford, one of Mike and Puck's old friends called out to them, "My date's only been able to remove her socks! I'm ready to see some flesh!" He winked at the large woman, Lauren, who Puck set him up with for him to be invited to this event.

Puck, from across the table said, "Then stop fuckin' winning!"

Meanwhile, at Sam and Mercedes'table, Sugar laughed and blew a kiss at Artie, who was pretty much still totally dressed, seated in his wheelchair, "We've got these babies, Baby!" After a few more moves, Mercedes had lost her socks and had to slide her bra off, from underneath her spaghetti strap blouse and covered herself with folded arms. She looked at the other table. Quinn Fabray's gloriously thin body, no matter how "traditional and kinda boring" it might have been was elegantly beautiful, even though she only wore a pair of lacey panties, now and used her hands as cups to conceal her small breasts.

Mercedes frowned. If Sam's ass kept losing and she had to take off this top, her little hands wouldn't mean shit to covering up her own big titties. Her brows furrowed in frustration. Matt must have started losing, because Lauren Zizes had come out of a few articles of clothing. That might have made Mercedes feel a little better about not being the only round naked woman in the room, if Zizes wasn't so damned confident that she had her leg propped up on Matt's chair like Captain fricking Morgan.

Blaine was shirtless and sockless as Kurt played his hand, but he was also thin and attractive, and Mike Chang was almost naked, too. She wondered if anyone was trying, or if they all were just eager to see their dates buck ass naked? Then, she wondered if Sam was doing that to her? Why would he want to see her naked and her mind just began to travel to all other kinds of ugly...

Sam bit his lip and shook his head, throwing down the rest of the cards in his hand. "This ends now, y'all. She's obviously not comfortable," he said, holding a hand out towards Mercedes.

"She's also obviously an adult, Mr. Evans," Santana commented. "She'd tell me to piss off, if that's what she wanted." Sam frowned and looked at Mercedes. Santana smirked and suggested, "Maybe you don't want anyone to see any more of her. Want all that chocolate thunder reserved for your pretty green eyes and big fluffy buttermilk pancake lips..." Sam pursed his lips together and turned red in the face. He didn't think he liked this Santana woman very much, even though she was partially right. He didn't know exactly why but he did feel a little protective of Mercedes, maybe even territorial.

Mercedes sighed and rolled her eyes and got up, grabbing all of her clothes. "So, if this game's over, I'll be heading for bed. Goodnight, folks."

She rushed away and into the bathroom in the bedroom that they set her and Sam in to get a bit of ashamed crying out of the way. It wasn't long before she heard a knock and waited to see if it was him. "Cedes, are you alright?" It was Quinn. She sighed and opened the door. Quinn still held her hands over her breasts and Mercedes laughed at the sight of her, like that. "You seemed upset when you left the room."

"I don't like having my body exposed like this. It's not even that I'm uncomfortable with my body so much as it is that I am uncomfortable with sharing," Mercedes said. She peeked into the bedroom and since nobody was inside, she retrieved her nightie. "I don't know why I let you take me shopping for this."

"Why do you say that? Mercy, he's seen you down to your skivvies, now. This nightie should be a piece of cake for you to wear," Quinn said, letting go of her breasts and holding the baby blue, shimmery, silk thigh length chemise up to her friend's body. "And this is one of his favorite colors."

Mercedes took the lingerie from Quinn and set it down. "How close are you two? He seemed surprised when I told him that you and I were really good friends in the time that you left McKinley when you were pregnant," Mercedes said, preparing her beauty products on the sink.

"Well, he and I dated for a couple of months, or so after I got back to McKinley. He's a great guy and all. Things just weren't really what they should be for us. But, I think that the two of you match well." Quinn leaned back against the sink and said, "Not just for a weekend fling, though I don't see what's wrong with that if that's what you both want. You deserve to have some fun, but you also deserve to have something real." Mercedes didn't know how to feel about this news. If _Quinn _was Sam's type, the hell was she going to be able to do with him? Maybe his taste had changed, or maybe he was simply enjoying his damned weekend, like she would have to keep reminding herself to.

Mercedes was in the bed, wearing a pair of reading glasses and playing around on her laptop when Sam came into the room, a while later. There was a glass of wine on the nightstand next to her. She smiled at him and said, "I figured that they'd be bold enough to try to make us share a bed. I brought along a hammock, if you'd prefer not to have to share..."

Sam flopped down on the bed and kicked off his shoes as he asked, "Why would I have a problem sharing a little bed with a beautiful woman?" She smiled at him, not answering the question. Sam collected some pajamas and a male tank top, then vanished into the bathroom to shower. When he came out of the bathroom, she had put away her laptop and laid herself down. He wondered if she was already asleep as he climbed beneath the covers with her. "Are there movies that you know every single word to?" She asked.

Sam chuckled and said, "Of course there are." It was a pretty good ice breaker, because they began talking about all kinds of trivial stuff as they lie down on opposite sides of the bed. Mercedes was unsure of how it even happened – they'd been talking about women in sci-fi movies and comics when somehow it turned into him telling her that he had been fantasizing about seeing her touch herself all week – since the day they met up at the music store and he saw her dancing to the demo she was listening to.

That subject turned into the fact that she had only ever tried touching herself once, years ago and it had been uneventful for her and deemed not worthy of her attention. "There's just not anything stimulating about my hands," she said, with a shrug. That was where the line got crossed.

"Are you kidding me?" Sam asked, moving over on the bed to reach for her hands. "These hot little hands have haunted my dreams. I'd _love _to know the damage your touch can cause." He kissed her fingertips and took control of her limbs, guiding her hands gently tracing them down her skin and body. This sent chills through Mercedes that she never knew her hands could invoke from within her own body. Sam took one of her hands and positioned it in between her legs, to orchestrate her rubbing herself with it. She whimpered. She hadn't expected it to feel so good. Even though he was applying the pressure and moving the hand, it was still her hand and she tried to squirm away from him as he demonstrated. "Do you not like it?" He asked. She stared at him, unable to speak, at the moment. He gave her a crooked smile and guided her other hand between her legs, as well.

With the other hand, he directed her to pull her panties aside, so that the main hand could be properly acquainted with its subject. She yelped, cooed and began to grind against her own touch. Sam slowly let go, looking at her take control, working herself in the way he'd just shown her and making some variations here and there. "I wanna watch you do it," he told her. She nodded and licked his lips. Sam shuddered and reached into his pajamas to join in on the self gratification. The two of them were no longer in that room. They had forgotten where they were and what the situation was. All that mattered were these sensations and the person staring ahead, making the ecstasy that much more sentimental.

After a while, when Mercedes breached the final stage, the thrill of her body's preparations frightened her and she let go of herself and temporarily panicked. Sam quickly rushed to her, taking her hands and resuming their efforts for her, "Don't stop now, Sexy. You're almost there," he told her. Mercedes leaned forward and sank her teeth into his chest as he maneuvered her hands to keep her in the zone for pleasure. He hissed when she sucked in the flesh of his pectoral but continued with her hands against her body until after she climaxed and fell backwards on the bed, trembling into spasms that she had never felt before.

Sam stole her hands and captured her fingers into his mouth, cleaning them off as he moaned hot breaths all over her digits. She tasted SO good! "Am I okay? I feel like my heart is going to explode. I feel like I'm going to die," she said, breathlessly. Sam smirked at her as he released her hands and reached for himself again, to finish up.

She was catching her breath, but he asked her, politely, "Is it alright if you spread your legs, just for me to stare?" She smiled, nervously, but did just as he requested.

"Would you like me to kiss you while you do this?" She asked, feeling a little bit awkward just laying there, spread eagle while his eyes grazed her body.

"I would like for you to do whatever you wanna do to me, please," he replied. Within moments, she began an assault of painfully tender kisses, wherever her lips may have landed. Sam thought that he might combust by the time that he finished himself off and his hand was covered in the stuff, with Mercedes' glorious lips still touching his body. "I need to go clean off my hand," he whispered.

But, Mercedes, following his example from a few moments earlier cleaned his hand and fingers off with her mouth. Sam watched her, with his heart, stomach and member all aching at the sight of this. Immediately, her mouth became irresistible to him and he sought it out for rough kisses, wrapping his hands in her hair as he did. She was lying down before she realized it and her body had become his treat. Her neck, her clavicle, her chest and her shoulders began being devoured by his large lips and he covered each of the areas in brilliant love marks, then smiled against her skin and held her with his head rested on her bosom.

"For a little while there, we were like Simon and Alisha. And I know, I know – we as an audience only had the chance to see Alisha and Curtis wanking off for each other's viewing pleasure, but in my head canon, Alisha and Simon do it when they're together, too – before she's able to touch again. And in my mind, he also gets to pour his spunk over her..." She laughed at the words she'd allowed to come out of her mouth, but she wasn't embarrassed or uncomfortable. Everything felt completely right for a moment.

Sam looked up at her face with a smile and said, "A post-orgasm Misfits reference?" Then he gave her an impression, in a deep British accent, "_I fuckin' love ya!"_ He clarified for her, "That was Kelly..."

"Yeah, I know," she laughed. Sam placed his head on her chest again and stroked her arm with his fingertips. "That was pretty amazing for not sex," Mercedes said. He let out a soft chuckle and nodded his head in agreement. It had been the most amazing "not sex" he had ever had. He got up and went into the bathroom to wash his hands and to get her a towel. She could use a wipe down, so she wouldn't be all sticky all night. Sam stroked her cheek and stared at her. She smiled shyly and broke eye contact. "I just want you to know that I don't plan on bringing any drama into your life or anything. I mean – I wouldn't expect you to get caught up on somebody like me and I'm not going to throw a fit if you should happen to bag yourself a thin, pretty blond like Quinn Fabray when we get back to the real world." She looked up at him again to see this displeased grimace on his face and a lifted eyebrow. "I heard that you two dated," she said with a shrug.

"Yeah, in high school and she cheated on me," He said, then shook his head, "But, that doesn't have anything to do with anything going on with us. Why do you assume that things would be any different for me after this weekend? And if it was, like if we decided that we aren't taking whatever it is between us any further, why do I have to be the superficial asshole that trades in a really awesome girl for a plastic?" He sounded truly offended.

"I didn't mean to say that. I only meant that I'm not in the habit of getting my hopes up about things. I'd prefer not to be hugely disappointed when you quit being interested in me and I was just letting you know you don't have to worry about trying to spare my feelings or anything. I do a pretty good job of shielding them off."

"Obviously," he said and rolled his eyes at her suggestions. It was weird, because many nerds told him that he couldn't be considered a real nerd because of how he looked, but whenever he tried to date or see anyone outside of that world, they let his ass know pdq that he was strange as shit and not amongst them. Mercedes' presumptions made him feel like that insecure guy that the popular girls loved to make out with because of his big hands and full lips, but hated to be seen with because of his goofy impressions and Star Wars references... She _expected _him to go after those kind of women.

"Mercedes, I know what it's like to be rejected so I'll try not to be pissed that you're prejudging how I handle my romantic life because of how I look. I'm simply gonna presume that's your past rejection or fear of it speaking and ask you not to bring it up again. In addition to that: at this point, I don't think that I would quit being interested in you if I could." He scooted closer to her and practically touched her nose with his, "We made a connection." She looked into his eyes and couldn't find a trace of a lie. His hands collected her into a cradling embrace and she leaned back to allow him to get back into bed with her.

When they were snuggled together, Sam kissed her shoulder and said, "I'm even going to overlook the fact that you're a Trekkie instead of a Star Wars Nerd."

"I like Star Wars just fine!" She defended.

"You totally think that Q is more badass than Darth Vader!" He fussed.

"You totally think that Princess Leia is more badass than Lt. Uhura!" She fussed back... "And that is simply absurd. Uhura would wipe the floor with that woman."

"I think that there should be a showdown to prove it. Uhura in that mirror outfit and Leia in the slave outfit and you know, just let them duke it out and see what happens..."

Mercedes laughed and said, "I'll tell you what'll happen – you put any damned outfit on either of them and Uhura's gonna beat the piss out of that brat! And of course Q is more badass than Vader. Vader had to be trained in the ways of the force and turn to the darkside to reach his level of badassery. Q's badassery is homegrown..."

When Sam rejoined everyone, after washing up for the day, he saw Mercedes, Sugar, Brittany and Santana talking and giggling. He looked at Artie and Mike, across the room, talking to each other and decided to go mingle with them. Something was going on with Mercedes, today. He didn't know if it was because the two of them were no longer alone or if she simply had awoken and counted what happened between them last night as a mistake, but he did know that the best thing to do was to leave it be until he could get her alone again. Then, maybe they could figure out what the hell they were going to do about each other.


	3. Cards on the Table

**Cards on the Table**

Sugar poured alcohol into her coffee and Mercedes laughed, "You honestly intend to go through this entire weekend drunk, don't you?"

"Better drunk than sorry," Sugar commented and took a sip from her mug.

"What?" Mercedes asked with a giggle.

Sugar said, "Oh, I meant, better drunk than never," and nodded her head with certainty, as though that was a good correction. All of the women around her laughed, but as Sam entered, Mercedes felt her heartbeat speed up. Santana was making some kind of comment to Sugar about her drinking when Mercedes noticed Sam look right at her, then make a sharp turn towards his friends. This shit felt a little like high school...The making out and masturbation, the worrying about her friends, the anxiety of seeing him and the disappointment of seeing him go the opposite direction. _Just your daily reminder that this is why you don't have a man..._

Sam leaned against the wall, facing his friends and purposefully avoiding any vantage points where he would be tempted to look up at Mercedes. "Hey, there. How are you holding up?" Artie asked.

"Strange choice of greetings," Sam said.

Artie shook his head and said, "Not really. I know you better than a lot of people. I know how easily you can get attached and how hard you can fall and I know that those aren't birthmarks all over Miss Jones' upper body. Looks like you took some time applying those..." Sam turned a little red at Artie's mention of the marks that Sam had put on her. Artie continued, "I know that it'd be difficult for you to have a fling with somebody likeable and the two of you seem really... well-suited."

"If it is gonna be hard for me to let go of her after this weekend, this train of thought won't help me, Artie," Sam said.

"Maybe not, but I'm concerned. I _told _them not to try to put you up to this. 'He's gonna really like her,' I told them. 'He won't be able to make this a casual thing,' I told them. 'You guys are gonna get him hurt,' I said... but they didn't listen, so hopefully – you will. I know that the two of you didn't have sex, because if you had, you'd probably be right up under her, whether she wants to hang with her girls, or not." Sam opened his mouth to deny that he would be so annoying, but Artie didn't wait, "Don't make that mistake, Sam. If you sleep with her, I know you – you won't be able to just go on with your life like it never happened. And so far, this woman seems like she's just here to spend time with her old friends and have a good time."

"I appreciate your concern, Artie – but seriously, Mercedes and I can take care of ourselves and our situation," Sam said, then changed the subject to today's games.

Mercedes was soaked and with the amount of clothing that she had on, she felt heavy as hell! Today was a battle of the sexes day. Mostly everything had been outside.

There was flag football (that they actually didn't do to bad in, considering), a hilarious game of hopscotch (since it confused Puck so irrationally), and an equally entertaining double-dutch competition (that Mercedes was proud to be champ of) "You didn't think that a big girl could get down like that, huh?" She asked the guys.

On that note, Santana and Lauren began singing, "Ey, big girl. Make 'em back it up. Make 'em back it up..." Mercedes clapped her hands once and jumped right into the Wobble dance, with her girls cheering her on and the guys, losers or not, very entertained. Sam smiled at the show and laughed when Santana and Mercedes began teaching the other girls their little victory dance, which seemed to be an actual dance that they were doing as Lauren continued singing the song for them.

Then, Matt jumped into the dance with them, followed by Mike and Artie did his own chair version, too. Puck and Sam looked at each other, and Jesse shrugged and joined in with a laugh. When Puck and Sam tried to do the very same fairly simple series of moves that everyone else seemed to quickly grasp, Puck did something that was sort of like it and Sam was just so thrown off that he made up his own little dance. No one noticed that Sugar had disappeared until she came back, carrying a cart of huge water guns, with the announcement, "We're going to have a drinking water gun fight."

"Is that even possible?" Kurt asked. _How the hell did this woman turn everything into a drinking excuse? _

"It's possible, because I've already said that's what we're doing, so we're going to do it. The way it works is that every time someone shoots you with a water gun, you take a drink. The water guns have water in them. The water bottles have alcohol. Stand in line, please," she said. Then she called out to Artie, "Do you have the score list, baby?" She asked.

He rolled up to her and gave her the list of names from highest scoring to lowest. Currently, Santana was in the lead, so she got the biggest water gun. She accepted it and her bottle of alcohol and raised her hands, victoriously. Puck was at the bottom of the list, so he got the smallest gun. Sugar was sure to tell him, "Until the game is over, if you run out of water, you have to refill your gun, yourself, with the water hose on the side of the house. Hopefully, no one ambushes you and gets you plastered before you finish."

Kurt mentioned, "This is crazy. I'm changing into my pool clothes," and as he began to leave, Sugar shot him in the back of the head with her water gun, which caused him to quickly turn around. "Sugar Motta!"

"Nobody told you to have _designer _outside clothes!" She snapped.

"You have designer outside clothes!" He contended.

Sugar smiled and nodded and said, "I think this about them." She ripped open her shirt and was dressed in her bikini top as she threw the shirt aside and pointed her gun at a quickly retreating Kurt.

Mercedes and Sam glanced at each other, as everyone else began to either run or to shoot. "Are we on teams?" She asked.

"I have no idea. Sounded like it's a solo effort," he told her, right before Puck shot him in the side of the head and she made a dash for it.

Puck cheered, "In ya face! In ya face!" And gave Sam the 'suck it' gesture before taking off running from Santana and her monster gun that she'd just used to spray an entire line of Brittany, Artie, Mike and Tina.

"Hey! Take your drinks! You bitches better take those drinks, when you get shot!" Sugar fussed. Her friends were running all over the place, trying not to get shot, trying to find hiding spots and trying to get good shots off on other friends.

By the time everyone was raving about getting into swimwear for pool volleyball, Mercedes began to peel off her several layers of drenched clothes and head towards the house. She was drunk. She hadn't been too bad off the previous night, but today... her head was spinning and everything. "Drunk pool volleyball seems like a horrible idea," Sam said, catching up with her on his way to the house.

She turned and looked at him. This was the first time all day that they were around each other without anyone else around. "It's a damned horrible idea. You think that's gonna stop 'em?" She asked, dropping her wet clothes. Sam bent down to pick them up for her and they walked to their room in silence.

When they got inside, he tossed her wet stuff in the bathtub and she followed suit. She hadn't even considered doing that. She was about to flop it right on the floor. "So..." he began to talk but paused when he saw her pick up a bathing suit that looked like Wonder Woman's outfit. She paused and stared back at him, confused.

"So...?" She offered - to help him back to his train of thought. Her eyebrow was raised at him and she seemed a bit uncomfortable.

"Oh, sorry. So, last night was really amazing, for me. I thought that you felt it, too. Today, you've been kind of distant and unresponsive," he told her.

"Funny you should say that because everyone else – you know, the people who actually know me have done nothing but tell me how open and out of my shell I've been all day." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I guess I can't please everybody." She looked down at her swimsuit and commented, "If I put this on, people are going to see all of the marks that you put on me." She looked over at her luggage and said, "Maybe I should just go with shorts and shirt?"

"Whatever makes you feel comfortable," he said. "Though, I have to say I would _love _to see you dressed as Wonder Woman." Mercedes spun around and sat on the floor, then started laughing, hysterically. Sam's eyes widened and he sat down next to her, "I wanna laugh, too."

"It's silly. My friends brought me out here to try to have a good time and to hook up with a guy and it turned out to be you! You, who I've had a crush on for literally the entire two years that I've worked at the comic book store!" She laughed again and kicked her little legs. "And you're all like 'we made a connection and I thought you felt it too,' like, like," she laughed so much he could barely make out what she was saying, "Like you'd really be interested in somebody like me, in real life!" She laughed until her face was so hot that she had to hold her hands out and try to still herself. "Your friends put you up to this, too. You don't have to pretend it's something special and you don't have to try to make me feel like some kind of princess."

She made a huge show out of getting up from the floor and ducking into the bathroom with her swimsuit. Sam got up and waited outside of the door with his arms folded. It had taken him a moment to put together what she had said, but she was going to talk to him about this and she was going to hear him out! Mercedes came out of the bathroom practically bursting out of the swimsuit, with a very unsettled look on her face, "Not only can they see all the damned passion marks, but all my titties trying to jump out of this thing!"

"All your titties?" He repeated, unable to help the laughter that forced out of him. She looked _delicious, _and her bright smile was killing him. "Flawless victory," he mumbled. She gave him a confused look and tried to walk past him, but he gently placed his hand on her hip to stop her. "Mercedes," he said, "I know that you're scared of what you feel, but I'm not here _just because _our friends have tried to hook us up. If that was the case, I could have easily tried to pressure you into going all the way with me and I'd just as easily not bother to have conversations with you. But, I enjoy conversations with you. I enjoy your company and your perspectives and your overall personality."

Mercedes' eyes refused to look his way. She was focusing on his crooked nipples, through the dampness of his shirt. She was focusing on his free hand that was shaking like a leaf. She was focusing on any and everything but his face, but she saw his lips. She could remember the way that they felt against her skin – better than any daydream that she ever tried to imagine them in. "I like you, for you. I don't know what that could mean for the future, if anything, and I am all for the entire slowing things down and seeing what happens route. But, if you don't want to risk it or if you don't want to take a chance on me; please don't try to blame me for allegedly not being interested. If you don't want me, then just admit that much. Don't spin it around on me."

"I uh.." She was staring at his lips. He licked them, bit them – what the hell was he trying to do to her? "I have no idea how to even begin to try to take a chance on anybody." She dared a glance up at his eyes, which was a tremendous mistake. He seemed so intently interested in what she was saying. He seemed to care so much. "I just can't make myself believe that I could last with anybody."

Sam shook his head in disbelief. She even saw some disappointment there. "What happened to you?" He asked. Her eyebrow lifted and he could see some sassiness in her eyes. At least that was a start. It said that she wasn't completely empty. "Aside from Vocal Adrenaline, who it was a given that everyone was intimidated by, New Directions worried about having to go up against the Warblers, when they had Kurt and Blaine, and _always _the Troubletones. Any idea why? - Because the Troubletones had this leader who was fierce and fearless. She had this amazing air of confidence about her. She had style and stage presence that was dynamic. She was talented beyond measure, knew it, embraced it and unleashed it."

He shook his and stepped back. "You sounded amazing and you looked stunning. There wasn't a guy that I knew who didn't look two or three times when you walked into a competition and when you were onstage, I knew people who literally cried every time they heard you sing. Girls at our school idolized you and felt like you were a role model, for being who you are and being comfortable with that person. Now, you're so insecure that you can't even take a compliment and you have trouble believing that a good guy might actually want you? I don't understand, Mercedes. Can you help me to understand?"

She sighed and said, "Damn... I think that you just shamed me into sobriety."

"I wasn't trying to embarrass you. I'm trying to understand why you won't accept what's happening between us. It's more than a little fling. It's more than some crush. I can't be imagining all of it, even with my vivid imagination! The way that you looked at me when it was just the two of us and the way that you said my name..." He practically moaned. He traced her ear with his pinky, "Am I reading more into it than what's here?"

"You're reading that I've never been physically involved with somebody this way and I have yet to figure out how to deal with it. All of this is very new and strange and scary for somebody like me..."

"Will you stop saying that? I don't even know what you mean when you say it! What is that? Somebody like you?" Sam snapped.

"Somebody who has never had anybody to care for her this way!" She snapped back. "I had a high school sweetheart, Shane. He seemed really in love with me and we were a pretty great couple. He used to make fools out of you McKinley boys during football season. He was good and Ohio State wanted him. He was sure that we were going to be together forever and have this fancy football life." She laughed. "But, do you know that while I was the one that always believed in him and vice versa, the moment that he got his scholarship, all kinds of Barbies and black Barbies and whatever the hell else friends of Barbie's started coming from all directions?"

"So he dropped you?" Sam asked, incredulously, already pissed off at the guy who must have made her lose her confidence by his shallowness.

"That's just it. He didn't. He stuck it out. He wanted to stay with me. _I _was the one who couldn't take the heat. _I _was the one who was afraid and backed away. I thought that it would only be a matter of time before he realized that he was the #1 wanted guy in school, that he was going to college and would be a football star and have a shot at the pros and he was going to look next to him and wonder, why the hell did I settle for this? So, _I _broke things off with him. He cried. He told me that it felt like I punched him in the heart, but month later or so, he moved on. He found a new girl – skinny, pretty, nice... and as far as I know, he never cheated on her, never lied to her, never did a damned thing too wrong. He's in the NFL, and she's wearing his ring."

"That could've been you," he said.

"Yep. But, I'm so damned _clueless." _She shook her head, "It's easier to just not get into anything."

"But, what if you miss out on another good one, because you were too afraid?"

She laughed and shrugged, "Then I'll end up with what I always had." Mercedes shook her head and told him, "I like my life. It's not too exciting, so I never have to worry about unexpected drama. It's not too emotional, so I never have to worry about unexpected heartache. I've not too interactive, so I never have to worry about making a grown man cry again." Mercedes bit her lip and wished that she had a drink, right now. She wasn't much of a drinker, but she had helped herself today and a bit yesterday. It seemed to take some of the edge off.

"Maybe he'll cry if you don't give him a chance," Sam said, softly.

"Maybe," she said and stared at him. "Since Shane and I broke up, all that I've had to pay attention to me were guys who were interested in getting off with a big girl or who assumed because I have all these curves that must mean I need someone to tend to my body... It became so exhausting that I just started wearing layers upon layers of clothes and making sure that I stayed away from places with crowds of people. I go to the music store, the book store, the coffee shop, work and home – and I spend my social life on the computer. Those people are wonderful to me. They make me feel like a person."

"I'm not after some cheap thrill," Sam reiterated.

"I believe you. After I hurt Shane, I decided that I would not get into another relationship until I could figure out who the hell I am in love. I never got a chance to do that, because I gave up on the search. It has been years since anyone looked at me and saw someone worth their time. I love it, and I revel in these feelings that you're giving me... but what happens when I find that I don't know what the hell to do next? What happens when I mess up? I don't know if I've grown enough to do things any differently than I did when I was in high school. I don't want to make any mistakes with you. I don't want to get back to life as we know it and have to struggle with the complexities of not being threatened by the traditional and boring beauties that I know must flock to you."

"So... You don't want me because you're afraid that you'll push me away when someone else wants me?" He asked.

"I guess so. I know that sounds very immature, but I haven't had any practice with getting out of the mindset that I was in as a teenager."

"Well, it sounds like you need some practice," Sam said.

"I... don't know what to do. I don't want to mess everything up."

"Nobody ever knows just what to do, but you have to decide if you want it badly enough to be willing to go in blind and learn to play things by ear until you know every song," Sam said. Then Sam told her, "I'm gonna tell you like this – I likes ya and I wants ya. We can do this the easy way. Or we could do it the hard way. The choice is yours."

Mercedes blurted into a mess of laughter, hell maybe, she hadn't sobered up, at all! After she was able to catch her breath again, she smiled softly and told him, "I really like you. I want to see you. I don't think I'm ready to try to be a girlfriend, but... I want to figure out if I could get to that point with you."

"I can work with that. There's hope in that," he said. She nodded, then leaned in to kiss him. Sam hungrily kissed her back, eventually backing her against the wall. Mercedes breath grew hard as he kissed her neck, and when he brushed his lips across her trail of marks, she hissed. "I would say sorry, but I'm really not. I'm glad that I marked you."

He spun her around and backed her up to the bed. Mercedes lied down on her back as Sam climbed on top of her, kissing her. "Did we... did we decied that we were going to slow things down?" He asked, hoping that he wasn't assuming this was alright with her.

"No, you said that you were willing to, but that was not a confirmed course of action," she said, sliding her hands down her body like he'd shown her last night.

"Okay, good," he told her and watched her reach for herself, but he caught her hand, amused by the shocked and annoyed face it brought to her face. His free hand traced a similar path down her and he landed his hand to cup her warmth, as he moved her hands aside with his other, leaned down and whispered to her, "_I_ wanna touch you, this time."


	4. Slowly Learning

**Slowly Learning**

Sam made Mercedes laugh. She was a person who enjoyed laughing/laughter, so making her laugh was not overly difficult, but it was extra special to her, because many people in her life didn't too much try to do it. They rejoined their friends by the pool about an hour later than when they went inside of the house and Mercedes wore a thin blue kimono over her swimsuit, mostly to hide the marks on her neck and chest from last night, but also to mask the newer ones Sam had proudly and hungrily made on her inner thighs. Damn that Sam!

As soon as Sugar saw them, she said, "You're late. I hereby declare you on shots duty."

"What's shots duty?" Sam asked.

"When someone scores, you pour our shots, like a good Pool Boy," she said.

"Sugar, you're gonna get alcohol poisoning..." Mercedes said, carefully.

"You're gonna get semen poisoning," Sugar retorted right back, then laughed and went, "Ohhhh!" She slammed the bottle into Sam's chest and said, "It's gonna be you, because Cedes is sitting with me, here on the side." She grabbed Mercedes' hand and pulled her to a beach chair next to the pool. "So, I take it you were in there dealing with that deformed penis of his?" Sugar asked, entirely too loud. Mercedes felt her face heat up and she avoided glancing at Sam, who turned red in the face, but followed them over, as well.

The teams in the pool were being quite aggressive. Mercedes watched them and thought, _Dang, this is as bad as the time we beat the hell out of them in dodgeball... Do they know that this ISN'T dodgeball? _"You, um... you discussed my penis?" She heard Sam's voice ask. She tried to focus on the ball, that Blaine made a score with.

Sugar cheered, "Shots! Pool Boy! Shots!" She lifted her shot glass to him and he frowned and poured her a shot. "Cedes – you too," Sugar instructed. Mercedes held up the little shot glass that Sugar gave her to Sam and he grabbed her wrist, to get her attention,

When she faced him, he studied her with a raised eyebrow, as he poured her shot. "Did you not hear my question?"Sam asked. "You talked about my junk with your friend? Your drunkest friend at the party?"

"It was a group," she said, softly. That probably didn't help. She quickly tried to explain, without passing out from the embarrassment accompanied by this scorching hot shot she'd just taken. "I was just asking, because I'm not that familiar, but it just didn't look like any of the ones that ever sporadically pass on my tumblr dashboard."

Sugar told him, "We told her that it's good to be a little bigger at the top, right before the head and we totally assured her that the fact that it curves upward is a definite plus, Sam. Don't get bent out of shape..." Then, she laughed at the obvious pun.

"I was asking questions for medical concerns," Mercedes quickly said with widened eyes.

"Shots! Pool Boy!" Sugar said, lifting her shot glass without even looking up at him. Mercedes lifted hers, too, but she was watching Sam to try to determine how mad or upset he was. He poured both of them their shots and watched the ladies put them away. Mercedes nearly choked. Whatever they were shooting was hella awful.

"If you had any questions, you could've asked me," Sam said. "They don't all grow the same way." His face was red, but he didn't know if he was angry or simply ashamed. God, he hoped that Santana wasn't in the group that she'd had that discussion with, but rationalized that she had to be. They probably discussed it after breakfast, when it was just she and her former Troubletones. God, Santana was going to have a field day eventually with this. He realized that he wasn't angry, though... Just hurt. He would never discuss Mercedes' body with his friends. That was just private and personal and to be honest, he didn't want to think of anybody visualizing her like that.

"I don't know you as well as I know them. I wanted to know if I should be worried about that thing," Mercedes slurred and pinched the bridge of her nose, "Sugar, what the hell are we even drinking, here?"

"Well, if you must know, Little Miss Spoil the End, I poured most of that bottle out into the bathtub punch. I left some of it inside, and I went on to put in a little of pretty much everything else that I had in stock into this bottle."

"Jesus!" Sam cried out.

"Shots!" Sugar cheered and held up her glass.

Sam told her, "I'm not pouring anymore of this. Mercedes is right – this is dangerous, Sugar. You can't just mix liquor all randomly like that. You honestly could get alcohol poisoning."

"I never get alcohol poisoning," Sugar said, shaking her shot glass at him.

"And what's worse, you let Mercedes drink this stuff?" Sam snapped at her, angrily, took the bottle and walked away from them.

"Hey! At least leave the bottle! You are the worse pool boy ever!" Sugar yelled at him and threw one of her sandals. When he was out of sight, she pulled a flask out from her her seat and said, "That muffugga most not know what my name is!" She pulled out another and tossed it to Mercedes, "And, I've a spare."

"Should I go check on him?" Mercedes asked, her hands tightly wrapped around the unopen flask. "He seemed really bothered about me talking about his body with you guys."

"Yeah, Artie says that Sam's totally self conscious about two things on his body – his mouth and his cock. Both of which he has been told were not normal," Sugar laughed. "Maybe if he whipped it out for us and we gave it some praise, he'd feel better about the misshapenness of it."

"I am so impressed that you still have the ability to say a word such as misshapenness with all that you've drank today."

"Of course, I know that you mean with all that I've drank this weekend," Sugar said and took a swig from her flask. "But, suggest it to the poor fellow. He's got crooked nipples, extra large lips and a misshapen penis. We have to do something to boost his self-esteem."

"Sugar... I am not asking Sam to show everyone his penis so that you can praise him for it!" Mercedes snapped, then mumbled, "I'll praise him enough for everybody, later." Sugar exploded into tear-filled laughter at her friend's comment. Mercedes jumped. Obviously, she'd said that louder than she intended to.

Sam was definitely drunk. He began to drink right after finding out that Mercedes and her friends had been discussing his abnormal genitalia. It wasn't his fault that it was larger near the tip and it curved upward! That was one of the main reasons he generally kept the thing to himself. Girls made comments on it. Since becoming an adult, he had not gotten so much flack for it, but his relationship with pornography had taught him that he wasn't the only man alive shaped like that. He had gotten more comfortable with it, though the moment it was looked at oddly, it immediately fell. He had opportunities to have sex... that had never been the problem. The problem had mostly came down to trusting and being comfortable enough with a woman that his abnormality didn't bother him.

Sam took another sip as the others came in, soaking wet. Mercedes was wet, too, with her kimono stuck to her body. "You're wet. You got into the pool drunk?" He asked, concerned and disappointed.

"Puck threw me into the pool," she said with a laugh. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his back. "Why'd you leave us?"

"I couldn't take the talk," Sam said and spun around on the stool, to pull her into his arms. With her there, it was like he didn't even care about how uncomfortable he had been about the discussion. With her in his arms, he felt completely at ease with her and with himself. Puck and Mike both smirked at each other, while Artie looked at his friend, warily. Sam kissed Mercedes' forehead and told her, "Just some personal stuff that I'm still working within myself. You aren't the only one with insecurities." He stroked her face and she smiled.

Suddenly, Mercedes gasped and said, "Oh! Sugar said that you should show it off and see that women actually are impressed with it. That'll help you feel better!" Sam started laughing, as Mercedes reached for his shorts. "At first I told her NO WAY! But, if you're all sad, maybe I'll consider it."

"Hey, hey, hey... No. That is not a good idea, Cedes. That is a very, very bad idea and I don't want to show that to anybody but you," Sam said and kissed her. Sugar turned on some music and began to dance in the middle of the floor, now carrying with her the flask that Mercedes had been drinking out of at the poolside. "If she doesn't die this weekend, I am going to be shocked and impressed," Sam told Mercedes.

"For a little thing, she has a ridiculously high tolerance," Mercedes told him, nonchalantly strumming the front of his shorts while she looked over at her friend. "With me, it's a opposite. I'm a big girl, but I have a little liquor, and my words are all messed up. I feel like the floor is moving and stuff, rooms spinning. You feel that way?"

"Mercedes..." Sam said and took her hand to interweave their fingers. She turned to face him and saw this hungry look in his eyes. "Wanna go lay down for a little while?" He asked her. Mercedes nodded. She was feeling _extra _drunk and pretty lightheaded, as well.

"I think I need a shower," she told him.

"Funny you should say that! I think I need one, too!" Sam told her and practically pulled her into their room.

"We have got to be two of the most damned awkward people on the face of the fucking planet," Mercedes complained as Sam held the ice pack on her back, and she had a towel draped over her backside, laying on her front.

"I am so sorry, Mercedes," he repeated.

"It wasn't your fault, though. I know that my ass is already clumsy. Plus, I'm the one who's been drinking with Sugar all day and thought that I could handle standing up in a freaking shower!" She said, laughing angrily at herself.

"Yeah, but maybe you could've if I wasn't trying to go down on you in the shower," Sam said, feeling almost as bad as he had when Mercedes' foot slipped in a puddle of shower gel on the tub floor and she went crashing to the floor with both of her legs up. Initially, he was terrified, even though she was laughing, at the time. Now, he just felt guilty while she was in a good amount of pain. She landed right on her ass, and even though she had a nice amount of cushion, she bumped her tailbone... which hurt like a bitch!

Quinn knocked on the door and came inside, "Brought you some soup," she said.

"She isn't sick. She's injured," Sam said.

"I brought _you _some soup," Quinn told him, handing the bowl over. "You looked green when you came to get the ice, wrapped in a towel, muttering about how she'd fallen out of the shower." Quinn pointed her head towards the door and said, "I forgot your spoon."

Mercedes commented, "I think that was some kinda hint."

"Yeah," Sam said, lifted the bowl of soup gratefully and made his way out of the door, giving Mercedes another look before he walked out.

Quinn and Mercedes watched him go, looked at each other, then burst into laughter. Quinn checked the bruise beneath the ice pack and shook her head, "Your ass is so clumsy!" She teased.

"Well, add the fact that I've been drinking, there was soap on the ground and I was highly distracted from the whole standing on my own two feet thing," Mercedes said.

"So, were you two...?" Quinn asked.

"We haven't did the whole, you know the going all the way part, but it seems kinda soon," Mercedes said, sitting up with a groan. "Where is everybody?"

"We're taking a break. Sugar is knocked the hell out on the couch, so we're just kind of enjoying the moment. Kurt and Blaine went to go rest up. Tina and Mike are probably getting it on. It's just been Artie, Puck, Matt, Lauren and I hanging out for the past thirty minutes, or so. I had some food and washed up, so I don't feel nearly as drunk as I did during volleyball, but I'm pretty sure that I'm done drinking for the night." Mercedes nodded. "Cedes, listen... I know that you were kinda pressured into coming here and spending some time with Sam, but I hope that you know – you don't have to do anything that you're uncomfortable with."

Mercedes stared at Quinn for a while, then said, "I know that, Quinn. What is it that you think that I'm gonna do that I _don't want to_?"

"You're taking showers with a complete stranger, for one. That's not you, Mercedes. I mean, Sam is a great guy, but I don't want you to move too fast and have everything blow up in your face, if you actually like him," Quinn said.

"Well, Sam and I have agreed not to pay any attention to any of you about us, but thank you for your concern." Mercedes sat up and wrapped the towel that had been draped over her butt around her. "I think that I am going to change into my nightclothes, and cuddle up with my computer." Mercedes glanced at the door and Quinn took the hint. Mercedes fumed at the back of her friend's retreating head and reached for the light green shimmery nightgown that she'd chosen to wear to bed.

When she slipped into the thigh length fabric, she stared at herself in the mirror, traced her fingertips over the marks on her skin. This entire thing felt so surreal... like come Monday morning, she would wake up and all of this would have happened in a snow globe of her imagination. That thought caused her to pull up St. Elsewhere on her laptop and she crawled beneath the covers and began to check her messages and different social networking pages as she listened to her music. Sam soon reentered the room and she looked over at him. Damn, that boy was hot. All he had to do was WALK, and it set her insides on fire!

He sat next to her on the bed and asked, "How's your back?"

"Still hurts, but I couldn't keep laying on my belly with that ice on me. That was so uncomfortable. Maybe when I have some of this alcohol out of my system, I'll take some pain pills and sleep for a while." Sam bit his lip and curved his mouth to the side. "It wasn't your fault, Sam," she reiterated. He nodded, but she could tell that he still felt bad as he climbed into the bed, with her. "You going to bed, too?"

"I think that everyone's retiring for the night, actually. I heard a lot of sex sounds coming down the hall and the only people in the living room were Puck, Quinn and Artie, with a passed out Sugar on the couch." He reached for her laptop and asked, "Whatcha lookin' at?" She closed out of the screen and stared straight ahead, which made him laugh. "Okay..."

"I was just trying to get some insight on some stuff and it was kinda embarrassing," she admitted.

"Insight on stuff?" He repeated, with a tilted head.

"Well, we're both, you know, virgins... but something tells me that despite that – either you know what you're doing or my body is just magically inclined to be receptive to everything about you. I'd like to make you feel as amazing as you make me feel," she said, lowering her head, with her temperature rising.

Sam took the laptop and set it aside, "You make me feel incredible, Mercedes. I mean, I've thought about you for a long time, and it just seemed so unrealistic that you'd ever have anything to do with me that I let it stay this silly fantasy. But, now, that you're really here with me... trust me; you don't have to try hard to impress me. Everything you do is magic." Sam leaned in to kiss her and rubbed his nose against hers, "Besides, everything that I know I learned from porn and hentai."

"Hentai?" she repeated, with a confused look into his green eyes.

"Do you not know what hentai is?" Sam asked.

"Well, yeah – I know what it is, but..." She shook her head and looked away, laughing, shyly. Sam reached for the laptop and settled himself next to her. "Sam Evans, please tell me that you are not going to try to show me hentai!"

"No, I'm not. I'm _actually _going to show you hentai. You need a guide that material. Too much of this stuff has rape, or incest, or huge demon cocks. I wanna show you some that isn't too scary or gross," he said. "If I don't, I know you'll try to research it later and you'll come across stuff and be like, _what the hell is wrong with Sam? Maybe I should stay away from his busted creeper ass_," he said that part in her voice and she laughed. "Ah – this one's pretty hot..." Sam said, clicking 'play.'

Mercedes jumped up and winced in pain when she heard the loud knocking on the bedroom door. Sam jumped up as well and when the door flew open, he instinctly jumped in front of her, with his arms out, to defend her from whatever was coming through the door... Sugar's. Crazy. Ass! "Wakey, wakey!" She yelled. "So, I've had my nap and my coffee and I got up in time to go forth with one of my favorite parts of Game On Weekend!" Sam exhaled and turned to look at the CLEARLY pissed off Mercedes Jones.

He strummed her arm, but she barely noticed him as she climbed out of bed and limped quickly towards Sugar, "Are you out of your damned mind?"

"It's Midnight Pajama Freeze Tag time, Mercedes," Sugar said, completely ignoring her friend's outraged question and locked their arms together. "Come on, Sam!" Artie was in the hallway, in his chair, apologizing to everyone.

Puck was in the hallway, completely naked, with his arms folded, "I don't sleep in pajamas," he said when his friends threw questioning glances his way. Lauren bit her lip, smirked and turned away, shaking her head.

Sugar let go of Mercedes and slapped her hands once, "Now! It's only Midnight, folks and I know for a fact that most of you weren't even sleeping. Jesse – it's impossible to sleep with your cock in Rachel's mouth," she said. When Rachel gasped and covered her face, Sugar commented, "Asperger's..." then went right into her issuance of the rules and such.

Sam looked at Mercedes, with her arms folded and her lip pouted. "You do know we don't have to do this?"

"I don't feel like hearing her complain," Mercedes said. She was exhausted. She and Sam spent a couple of hours viewing hentai and she watched as a study guide for how to touch him... and there was quite a bit of touching, and kissing, and tasting... She fell to sleep, after a while and he followed her into dreamland. Then, probably an hour later, Sugar's ass comes storming into the room! On any other night, Midnight Pajama Freeze Tag would sound like a wonderful time, but Mercedes was still in pain from her fall and exhausted from getting off to graphic cartoons with her... whatever it was that Sam was becoming.

As everyone began going outside, Sam asked Puck, "Seriously, you aren't even gonna put anything on, Dude?"

"I don't have no damned pajamas!" Puck snapped, as Quinn looked off to the side, hiding a smirk and scratching the back of her neck.

Sam shook his head and pulled Sugar aside, "Hey, I don't know if you know this, but Mercedes fell out of the shower earlier."

"Oh my God! Is she feeling alright?" Sugar asked, looking towards her slightly limping friend.

"Well, she thinks that you'll be upset if she declines, but she's really not up to the whole moving around thing. Think maybe you could give her a little pass this time, Darlin'?" Sam asked and gave Sugar a crooked smile.

"Sam Evans, there is something extremely hot about you," Sugar mused, which made him blush and look away. Sugar caught up with Mercedes and told her, "Hey, you look like you don't feel good, Girl. Why don't you and Sam hang back and next time we have a game like this, you guys get to start out as "it." She patted Mercedes on the back, then ran to catch up with everybody else.

Mercedes turned around and looked at Sam, with a puzzled look. He held out a hand to her and she met his and walked back into their room, hand in hand. Whatever he was becoming, she never wanted it to end.


	5. So What Next?

**So... What Next?**

Sunday morning, Mercedes began to pack all of her things away, after a long, hot bath to try to soothe the painful aching from her fall. The previous night, she and Sam stayed in while their friends played freeze tag. By the rowdy way that everyone came back in, she presumed that they had a lot of fun. After a while, the noise died down. After a longer while, she could hear pretty much everyone in the house getting it on. "That is so distracting," she heard Sam say from behind her as she lie on her side, pretending to be asleep. He grunted and tried to shield his ears with a pillow. He knew that she was in pain and it had gotten a bit worse. She took some pills and was kinda drowsy, but the pain was still there. She might have to go to a doctor.

If she did, she would just say that she fell out of the shower. That was what happened. But, what if the doctor asked her _how _she fell? Did doctors do that? She shut her eyes tightly and waited to fall to sleep. She woke up this morning with Sam wrapped all around her, again. Now, after washing up, she was packing. "Overall, it's been a good weekend," Sam said. He had been virtually living out of his bag, so he didn't have to pack up.

"It's been great," she said. "Aside from the whole shower incident."

"You caught a cab here, right?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. My car is problematic. It overheats and sometimes stops, so I didn't want to make this 45 minute drive here. Sugar footed the cab, though – so I was cool with that," Mercedes told him.

"You can ride back, with me," Sam said, trying not to sound too intense about the possibility. But, he knew he was blushing and he felt how hot he was in anticipation of whether or not she would let him take her home.

"That sounds good. Are you leaving tonight or in the morning?" She asked.

"I think that I'll leave tomorrow, unless you have to be at work early, or something," Sam said.

"No, I took off tomorrow, just in case," she said, smiling.

"Excellent. Maybe we can do something tomorrow, together... alone," Sam suggested, gulped, and held his breath.

"Maybe. I'd like that," she told him, unable to force herself to make eye contact with him as she fought off a cheesy grin.

Mercedes sat on the couch and Sugar came to her and rested her head on her lap, "Mercedes! I feel horrible!" Sugar whined.

"What do you need me to do, Babycakes?" Mercedes asked her.

"Baby me!" Sugar said, with a pouty face. That settled it. The others were pooped, anyway and some of them were heading home tonight, because they had to work in the morning; but Sugar was making no effort to leave Mercedes' lap for the rest of the time there. Sam was slightly annoyed, but not TOO much, because he would have her all to himself tomorrow, and if he made the right moves, for some time to come.

This had not been his plan. He wanted to come out here for a weekend of fun and games with his friends and maybe a hot short fling with a gorgeous lady... how could he turn away from her, now, though? She was just so beautiful and her level of shyness yet curiosity made him want her more and more the more time he spent around her. Artie was right. He did fall fast and he fell hard, but hell – life was too short not to seize moments. When he became familiar with new women that he might like to have a deeper connection with, he always thought about that opening scene of Meet Joe Black. It could happen that way, so he preferred to do all that he could in all of the time that he had.

Mercedes could feel a pair of eyes on her and she turned her head to see Sam staring lovingly at her. His gaze was intense and made her feel flushed. She wrapped her arms around Sugar and stroked the smaller woman's hair. Mercedes faced the TV again. "The best things about Troubletones sleepovers was Mercedes cuddles," Sugar croaked. "I'm never drinking again."

"And by never, I suppose you mean not until the next party?" Mercedes taunted.

"Check," Sugar said with a little laugh, then groaned in pain.

"Shut up and be still," Mercedes said, "and you better not throw up on me!"

"Oh my God, Cedes, that was _one_ time!" Sugar said.

"That's one time too many for me to be getting threw up on!" Mercedes fussed right back, though she was still stroking her little buddy's hair. Sam watched enviously. Maybe at some point he would get some soft, plushy, hair strumming cuddles from Cedes, himself. He smiled at the thought and was caught by Mike.

Sam straightened up when he noticed Mike looking at him in amusement. "Hey, Mike. You and Tina heading out tonight, or in the morning?" Sam asked, avoiding the obviousness of him staring at Mercedes like she was a wonder of the world.

"We're gonna leave in the morning. Matt's gone. Lauren's gone. I think that Puck and Quinn are leaving tonight. Kurt and Blaine are leaving this afternoon and I think that Jesse and Rachel are getting ready to go, now."

"So, that leaves you and T, Sugar and Artie, Mercedes and me..." Sam tilted his head, to try to remember who else was still there. As though on queue, Santana entered the kitchen, in a big shirt.

"If I didn't know any better, I would swear the two of you were gay together. You're always in each other's faces with the googly eyes, meanwhile, your girls are solo in the wind," she said upon entering the room.

"If I didn't know any better, I would swear that you hate your life, because you're always being unnecessarily rude," Sam said.

"Oh, that's not because I hate my life, Trouty. It's because I just don't care for other people, that much." She shrugged and opened the refrigerator. "Where's Wheezy? I need me somebreakfast."

Mike answered, "Sugar's already obtained her services for hungover cuddling."

"Hey, Mama Cedes! You got starving sisters in here in need of eggs and bakey!" Santana called out.

"Mama's got a sick baby on her chest, right now, Tana. You're big sister, do some big sister things and make your own breakfast," Mercedes called out. Sugar winced at her loud voice and Mercedes rubbed her head and said, "Sorry, Sugar."

"You know I can't cook for shit!" Santana snapped, slamming the fridge. "One of you wanna make me some eggs or something. Sam – your family's from the south, doesn't everyone down there know how to cook, even if it's roadkill?"

"Not the best way to convince me to help you," Sam said. "So, why is it that all of y'all always turn to Mercedes for your service needs? Is she here to be cooking breakfast and babying sick people who shouldn't have drunk that damned much, in the first place?"

Santana grunted at him and began to fix herself a bowl of cereal. "She's here because she needed to unwind and we thought that a wanky old time with you might help her in that department." She sat down next to Sam at the counter and began to eat, "But, even we can be wrong, at times. Hooked our girl up with a crooked stick that lets her fall out of the shower," Santana shook her head in genuine disappointment. Sam got up and stormed away, to her amusement.

"Sam?" Mercedes called when she saw him pass by. "Tana, what did you do?" She called out.

"I did what I do," Santana called back. "Next time, you fix me breakfast and I won't trample the Hunchdick of Notre Dame's feefees."

"Stop being a bitch!" Sam heard Mercedes scream at Santana, but he didn't leave the room again. He paced it, trying to calm himself down. He'd almost called her that and his momma raised him better than that. Even if she was being one, he never called a woman something like that. After a moment, the door opened and he looked up to see Mercedes' concerned face. "I'm so sorry about her."

Sam shook his head and smiled, "I don't worry about people like that. I don't know why I let her get me so worked up. I seriously don't get easily angry about stuff like people picking at me..."

"I have some of the most infuriating friends alive. I already know how they are." Mercedes walked over to him and stopped in front of him, unsure of what to do next. _Should she hug him? Or put her hand on his shoulder?_ This was so much easier with people who had not seen her bust her ass buck naked... "Um..." she reached for his hand and squeezed it while looking away shyly. Sam smiled, pulled her by the hand to himself and hugged her. Then, he kissed her. Then, he kissed her deeper. Then, he began to move her towards the bed... "Sam?" She said, softly. He gave her a little nibbling peck and looked into her eyes. "I was just coming to check on you. I promised Sugar I'd come right back."

He nodded his head, kissed her again, and let go of her. "Your friends seem to kind of depend on you a lot," he said as they headed back into the living room.

"It comes from when we were in high school. As Troubletones leader, I took a lot of responsibility for them – making sure they were alright and able to practice and perform. Now, they kinda expect the Momma Bear or Mother Hen or whatever the hell I was to be there."

"And you never tell them no?"Sam wondered.

"What can I say? My babies are spoiled, but if I ever gave a problem – they quickly rush in, ready to tackle it."

"Really? Because everyone knows that fell last night and I know that you're still hurting, but instead of your friends asking you how you were today, they just began barking orders and setting expectations for you, like it's your duty to wait on them..." Mercedes paused and looked at him and he could tell that he had said too much. "Sorry, but I think that they take advantage of you and that's not right."

"I'm not going to thank you for an unwanted opinion that I don't care for," she said. "I know who my friends are. You only know Sugar from the few times that you actually still get together with Artie and you just met Santana last week. The only right that you have to say anything about either of them is Freedom of speech..."

"I'm just concerned," he said, with a shrug, a little agitated with her response to him. She shrugged too and went back to her seat on the couch for Sugar to roll into a ball on top of her.

Mercedes woke up by herself on the couch. There was music and she smelled barbeque. She got up and went outside to see Tina, Brittany, Santana and Sugar playing Monopoly. Santana was taunting Sugar with, "I need to have a long talk with Mr. Motta about leaving you his legacy!" She made her way to the table and Sugar smiled and gave her a hug. "Well, well... if it isn't our own Esmerelda," Santana said. "You must have been tired as hell. You slept through a classic Quick argument, before they left."

"What were they arguing about?" Mercedes asked, grabbing a big bag of open chips off of the table.

"Cheating vs Threesomes," Sugar boldly announced. "We all know that Puck loves both and Quinn's not down for neither, but he keeps trying to tell her the difference between them, like that'll make her want to bring another chick home with them..."

"How'd they get on that topic?" Mercedes asked. Santana and Sugar glanced at each other and Mercedes rolled her eyes, "Why do you two always cause problems?" She glanced around and asked, "And where are the guys?"

"They went for a trip to get stuff to go along with the barbeque and condoms, I'm sure," Sugar said. "I mean, I know Artie better get some, because we've used all of ours..." Suddenly, she seemed quite alarmed as she fumbled with her phone to make sure that Artie came back with the this necessity.

"So, Cedes... Sam gonna be buying condoms, too?" Tina asked, with a smirk.

"I don't really want to get into any talk like that. We're both pretty private people and after my mistake of asking about his form, and of course Santana's bitchy taunting, he'd be really upset if I had another conversation concerning our..."

"Fuck buddy status?" (Brittany)

"Wanky weekend romp party?" (Santana)

"Operation Devirginize?" (Tina)

"Dorky dicking down?" (Sugar)

"Personal business!" Mercedes finished her statement with the other ladies laughing about it.

"But, did you say dorky dicking down?" Santana asked Sugar.

"Asperger's," Sugar commented.

Santana shook her head, "Oh, I approve of that phrase. I found it creative on the spot thinking and I'm impressed, Sugar. It's way more impressive than this bullshit Monopoly game that you play."

"When I was little, I always paid people to make sure that I won," Sugar said. "I don't know how to play a lot of board games. But, in college, I learned how to play cards, because all of the artists would target me for being a gullible little rich girl, and I got tired of losing money." Mercedes found a chair and pulled it up to the table. Sugar said, "Since Artie and I are taking you home, you're gonna help me clean up tomorrow."

"Oh, I'm gonna ride with Sam," Mercedes said. "I meant to tell you earlier, but you weren't feeling well." All of the ladies looked at her and smirked. "It's no big deal."

"No, it isn't, yet," Tina said. "But, this is Sam Evans. He told Quinn that he wanted to marry her some day after dating her for a few weeks."

"In high school," Mercedes defended. "I seriously doubt that he's like that, now. But, that's not anyone's business and I am going to stick with the practice of not spilling things to you." They say at the table talking until the guys came back, then Sugar elected Mercedes to take over making the sides. She frowned, but got up. Better she submit than have to worry about somebody ruining the damned potato salad.

Sam followed her to the kitchen and told her, "I got you some stuff to put on your back. It's like that rub on pain reliever stuff that smells like mint." She smiled and went to hug him. "I approve of this response," he told her.

"I'm sorry for how I was acting earlier when you were just looking out for me. You are a super sweet guy, Sam. What's wrong with you? What's your damage? Why aren't you with anyone?" She asked, looking into his face.

Sam smiled softly and offered, "Want me to put some of this stuff on your bruise for you?"She nodded and lifted up her shirt enough to give him room to assist her. While he was working on that, Mike and Artie came into the kitchen. Mike smiled and Artie tried not to, but it was hard. Those two were so damned cute! Sam even had his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth and kept flinching as he rubbed on the cream, worried that he might hurt her in the process.

"Sam, you helping out with the sides, or me?" Artie asked.

Sam threw him a surprised look and admitted, "I can't cook. The best that I can do is make food that _looks _really awesome."

"Looks like it's you and me, Mercedes," Artie said, taking some things out of the bags.

"I'll handle the potato salad," she said. Sam lowered her shirt, carefully and she smiled at him. "Thank you, Sam. You're so considerate." He shrugged his shoulders and blushed.

"I care," he admitted and kissed her on the forehead.

Mike asked, "We taking off, Sam?"

"Naw, I was gonna hang out in the kitchen. Kind of didn't get much of a chance to hang with Mermaid today," Sam answered and hopped to sit on the deck, out of the way. Really, he didn't know if Artie might ask Mercedes questions or try to warn her not to hurt him or something like that. He just didn't need any additional help with shaking her faith in his feelings of interest in her.

He had tortured himself all day about this and he was going to ask her to date him. The worse that could happen was that she could tell him no and hurt his feelings by doing so. But, if she said yes- they could spend more time together, getting to know each other better and becoming comfortable with each other. He swung his legs and simply watched as Artie and Mercedes cooked and sang together. "You know something, Cedes? You could've been a wonderful addition to New Directions. My voice and your voice were intended to sing together," Artie told her.

"I never would've made it with New Directions. Everyone knew how things were with you all. The entire Glee club revolved around Rachel Berry. I never would've made it as a recurring backup singer. I was a front woman."

After dinner, everyone seemed tired, for the most part. Sugar had elected to have someone come in to clean the place up after they left, and the friends all went to bed fairly early. Sam applied more of the pain relieving cream on Mercedes back after she washed up, and when he went to wash up, she waited in the bed for him. When he came out, she smiled and fiddled with her fingers. "So, um... the cream is really helpful. I can't feel any pain, right now."

Sam smiled brightly at her and climbed into bed. "Good. I hated seeing you hurting like that."

"Did you buy condoms?" She blurted out and quickly covered her face with a hand, now unable to see his green eyes widen significantly at her question.

"I did not," he told her.

"It's just that I'm not sexually active, so I don't carry anything with me because I generally never have a good in case moment and even though people were plotting on us this weekend – I still didn't imagine it happening. I'm not on the pill, because I don't need it. But, I want to do it... with you." She blew out a breath through puckered lips.

"That's very good to hear, but I didn't presume you would want that, so I don't have anything. I could try to borrow from one of the guys if you really want..."

"No, no, no..." She said, shaking her head. "I am in love with our practice of keeping them out of what's between us."

"Me too... But, Mercedes, what _is _between us?" He asked.

"Common ground, similar interests, mutual attraction... hopefully a romantic future?" She answered and looked at him. "I don't know if we're at a place that we can find an accurate label, but I do think that we're at a place to go ahead and admit that we want each other around for a while."

Sam moved closer to her and collected her into his arms to kiss her. "I've been waiting all day to get back into bed with you. Tomorrow, when we leave, since neither of us have anything that we need to do, we can get condoms and if you still want me..."he pressed his forehead against hers and pushed into her so that she could feel his erection pressed against her body. "I'll be ready for you," he whispered, hoarsely.

"That sounds like a good plan, Sam. Tonight, I think it's also a good plan to continue getting used to each other's bodies," she whimpered as he rubbed his erection against her, making her wet, beneath the thin material her night gown was made out of.

"You are full of the best made plans tonight, Miss Jones," Sam whispered against her collarbone before kissing it. He left her for a brief moment to turn out the lamp, then collected her again, removing the entire night gown from her body, so he could properly kiss her all over.

_Next chapter: Condom shopping, newbie confusion, and Mercedes meets Sam's pet monkey. Lol. Much more awkward coming up in the next chapter, so please stick around..._


	6. Here Goes

**Here Goes...**

Mercedes and Sam stared at the condoms, completely baffled. It was totally bad enough that they had to find a clerk to unlock the glass that held them, but then – they weren't sure of what to get, so they ended up staring at the numerous boxes, utterly confused and a bit embarrassed, because the clerk sort of stood there, watching them. Sam didn't help when he asked the woman, "Do y'all get a lot of condom theft?"

That made her even more suspicious as she admitted, "We get lots of teenagers who can't really afford them, but of course, know that they can't afford a baby, either." She eyed Mercedes cautiously.

Mercedes swiftly said, "I'm 22 years old!"

Sam smirked at her and picked up a box of condoms, "Don't lie, you sneaky teen. That woman knows a couple of kids out to get it on when she sees them."

"I have my ID," She said, reaching into her purse.

"You don't have to prove it, Ms. Pretty. Help me pick out a box – I don't know one from another," Sam said. He looked at the clerk and asked her, "Have you ever used these before? What makes them specifically for her pleasure and does that mean no pleasure for him?" The clerk rolled her eyes and walked away from the young couple at the display. "She didn't answer my question. How rude was that?" Sam shook his head and read the box, "What does ribbed mean?"

Mercedes moved in closer to him and studied the box, "It seems like there's little ridges on it, or something. I don't understand why that would be for my pleasure, though. I guess I'd have to actually feel it to understand."

"You want to get these?" He asked.

"Not really. I haven't even done it with a regular condom yet, I don't wanna jump right into ribbed ones. What if that takes away from the initial feel of my first time? I just want regular old plain condoms. Which ones are the plain ones? Is there one that just says plain on it?" She asked, picking up a box.

"If there is, I'm missing it. What have you got there?" he wondered.

"Non-lubricated. Maybe this is the plain one," she said, reading the box.

"I was told not to get those, before. You got some natural lube in your, you know, so it might not bother you as much, but with me just wrapping my junk in some tight rubber and then rubbing it in and out a tight space with no lube."

"Yuck. You'll be chafed," she said and put the box down, "For that matter, I might get chafed, too. I don't really moisten that well."

"Yes, you do," he argued, putting the ribbed ones into the small handheld basket that he had. She pointed to them and her eyes questioned him, "They're for after we've already tried the regular ones. If they say they're for your pleasure, I wouldn't even feel right just leaving them here, without at least trying one of them out."

She shrugged her shoulders and reached for a box of lubricated condoms, "Whatever you say, and no – I don't. Things have just been very different with you around me. I've never... my body has never been this way, before," she said, turning darker in the face as she studied the words on the box a little too hard. "Just in case, do you think we need any of that?" She nudged her head towards the lube as he snatched the box from her hand and tossed it into the basket.

Sam reached for a bottle of lube and read it, "Heating sensation... da da da da da... wait... if I'm reading this right, this," he shook the bottle of lube at her, "will make that," he pointed down at her private area, "hotter AND wetter?" He looked up at her with this bright, excited smile and these joyous green eyes that made her laugh and look away shyly – how much this thought entertained him. He tossed it into the basket. "I don't know – many of these things sound very good. These are extra thin, for a realistic feel.. wait – does it not feel real with the other ones?" He wondered, looking at her worried, then into the basket.

"It must feel real, I mean – people all over the world use them," she said, with a nervous shrug.

"I'll get these, too – just in case," he said, throwing them in.

"Sam, do you realize that you have three different boxes of rubbers and a sizable bottle of lube. How long or often do you plan on us doing this?" She asked, folding her arms across her chest and looking around, nervously.

"Well, I'm hoping that since we're both gonna be each other's firsts that neither of us are planning on making this a one and done deal. So, some of these condoms are for the near future. You're just too special of a lady to just settle for whatever constitutes as plain old condoms."

"What about you? Shouldn't you get these that have the wider tip?" She asked. He turned red and she quickly tried to explain, "For the semen, I mean. When you have your moment, it's so much semen. It's like an unreal amount. It's more like the hentai that we watched than the porn. You produce a lot of..." She covered her face and threw the box into the basket for him. "I feel so ridiculous, right now."

"I guess that I do cum a lot," he admitted, with a shrug, but still red in the face. "And I have an odd shape, so the big tip might be good for that." He wrapped his arms around her and the basket was in front of her as they both still read the many boxes in front of them, "There are just so many. I want to try as many of them as possible."

"You don't have to buy them all now, though," she told him.

"Yeah, but if we try the regular ones, then the ribbed ones and we want to see if we like the light bulb shaped ones, I don't want to try them like weeks later, after I've maybe forgotten a little bit how the ribbed ones were. We're in it together. Let's try it together. Let's try it all, together. Those, in the purple box have spermicide. If I got so much semen, I might need extra spermicide, because I'll have extra sperm, right?"

"But, why does a condom need spermicide? Isn't the condom like 99% effective? Is the spermicide for that 1%? Because if so, the purchaser is being cheated. Look at how much more those are! Sam, we don't need any more condoms for right now. I think we have enough, even for condom testing purposes," she laughed.

He kissed her on the neck, softly and said, "Alright, then."

"Mercedes?" She heard and looked up to see her boss, Jacob, who alerted when Sam turned around to look at him too. "Sam Evans?" Jacob stared at the both of them, dumfounded and they noticed his eyes move to the basket full of condoms.

"Jacob, hey, man – what's up?" Sam asked, turning red, all over again while Mercedes simply stared at Jacob with her mouth stuck open. "We're just getting some stuff for some things," Sam tried, but couldn't.

"Stop talking," Mercedes said, then told Jacob, "Good to see you, Jacob. See you at work." She grabbed Sam's arm and rushed towards the counter with him.

"Didn't we need to get some other things?" He asked.

"Nope. We can pick them up somewhere else," she said. Then, when they reached the counter, the cashier had to price check on some of the condoms. Apparently, there was some sort of sale that wasn't ringing, which resulted in the coworkers calling out specifications of the merchandise...

"No, that's the ribbed ones, what about the extra sensitive ones?" The cashier was asking, when the customer behind them asked her husband, "Good Lord, how many condoms do these people need?"

Mercedes reached into Sam's pocket for his keys and said, "I'll wait in the truck." He nodded, as red in the face as a beet. When he got into the vehicle with the bags, he immediately started laughing. Mercedes was frowning and simply shook her head, "We need to order them online next time. That was too much."

"I'll do it alone, next time," he offered, with a smile. "Granted, knowing me, it'll take me all day and I'll probably break the bank by the time I leave." He playfully elbowed her. "You okay? I know that was really embarrassing for you to run into Jacob Ben Israel in the condom section with a basket full..."

She burst into laughter and he stared at her. "You think that sex will make us a little less awkward? Because if it will, then we have to get on this asap. Cause I'm tired. Effie I'm TIIII-IIIIYYED!" She laughed again, covering her face while Sam stared at her, highly confused.

"Um... we can get right on it. I just gotta pick up Maurice from my buddy, Joe's place." Sam rolled his "R" when he said "Maurice," so when Mercedes repeated it, she said it the same way.

"Maurice?"

"Yep! That's my lil' buddy. I didn't... I didn't tell you about Maurice?" He asked, surprised. "What the hell did we talk about this weekend?"

"Sex, high school, our nosy ass friends, porn, hentai, movies, comic books and television shows."

"Wow," Sam said and looked at her. "Do you think we should talk about like more maybe important stuff?"

"We'll have time, right?" She asked, worried.

"Yes, of course," he told her and reached for her hand. "I just don't want this to be meaningless for you or for you to think that it's meaningless to me. This is really the most amazing thing to happen to me in years."

She shyly laughed and asked, "So, who is Maurice?"

"Maurice is my Capuchin," he said, and began to sort through his phone, while he drove. She watched the road, a bit uncomfortably as he found his photos and handed her his phone.

"Oh! You got a monkey?" She asked, both surprised and amused. "Aww, he is adorable, Sam!"

"He's a rascal, that's for sure. I think that you'll like him, though."

When Sam helped Mercedes out of his old truck and led her up the walkway to the house with bountiful trees out front and a large crucifix on the front door, she furrowed her eyebrows and asked, "Who lives here?"

"My buddy Joe's family. But, he'll be the only one here, right now. His dad's probably out selling Bibles and his mom works at their church during the day."

"Are they like really, really religious?" she asked.

"They're pretty cool. Well, his dad can be a little weird, but his mom's awesome. You'd love her. She's got an awesome voice and plays a bunch of instruments," Sam said and rang the doorbell. After a short moment, a guy with dreadlocks and bare feet opened the door.

"Oh, is it that time, already?" Joe asked, with a smile. "Come inside, friends." He walked through the house and Mercedes came inside, first, followed by Sam. "Hi, Mercedes," he said.

"Hi, Joe," she said back, a bit awkwardly.

He smiled softly and said, "I remember meeting you when I was looking for a public school. You were over the God Squad and I talked to you about the different things that your group did. We eventually decided on McKinley, but I was very near leaning towards coming to your school, just to be a member of the God Squad. But, my dad was freaked out that you had a pregnant girl in there." He smiled apologetically. "Funny enough, I ended up seeing her again, at McKinley, the next year."

"Yeah, Quinn," Mercedes said with a nod. "I remember you, now. You named your dreads after books of the Bible!" She cheered.

"Yes! That was me," he said.

The two of them began to talk about things and Sam cleared his throat and interrupted, "I'm sorry, but Mercedes and I have some really important stuff to do. I gotta get my space cowboy and get going, Bro."

"Right, of course!" Joe said and rushed to get the cage that Maurice was inside of,

"Were you flirting, Mermaid?" Sam asked, trying to mask his tinge of jealousy.

She scoffed, laughed and said, "No! I was just being nice. Why would I flirt with one of your friends? That's just tasteless and I'm a little bit disappointed that you think that I'd do that."

"No, I was just... _he _was definitely flirting!" Sam said. "It seemed kind of like the two of you kinda dig each other."

Joe came back with a covered cage and said, "He's a little restless. He heard his dad's voice and got excited."

"Thanks so much, Joe. I really appreciate you watching him for me," Sam said.

"Anytime, Sam." Joe's eyes went back to Mercedes and he said, "It was great seeing you again. Maybe, I'll be seeing you in the future."

"Stop flirting!" Sam hissed, partially playfully. Joe smiled and shook his head, his face indicating that he definitely was not flirting as he showed the two out.

She had been relatively quiet the entire ride to his place and he was unsure if that was because she was nervous, or because she was still offended that he thought that she was flirting with Joe. She was looking out of the window. It was a really pretty day and the day was not even half over yet. Sam didn't know if maybe they should try to do something else first, then go do _this, _or just get it out of the way... or if she even still wanted to with the silence coming from her. "Are you alright?" He finally asked, as he helped her out of the truck at his apartment.

"I'm nervous," she admitted.

"Yeah, me too," he told her, "And I'll understand if you aren't ready.

She smiled softly at him and let him escort her to the door. He unpacked their things and Maurice's cage. When he got everything inside, he noticed that she was looking at the family photos on his bookshelf, near his desk. He set the cage down and let Maurice pout, who quickly leaped out and climbed all over him. "Hey, Joker! Come meet Daddy's new friend. You better like her too, because Daddy wants her to start hanging around as much as she can." When Sam collected his pet in his arms and brought him over to Mercedes, she was about to coo when the tiny creature leaped onto her chest and began digging down her cleavage!

"Oh my God!" She squealed and put both of her hands up, too nervous to reach for the animal and risked getting bit or scratched. For the moment, he seemed to be searching for something, much to Sam's amusement as he rushed to collect him. When he was off of her, she held her hands over her chest and asked, "Is that typical monkey behavior?"

"I promise, he's never done that before!" Sam said, trying not to laugh as he made Maurice go back into his cage. "He probably thought those luscious things were some kind of melon or coconuts or something and just wanted himself a little bit of juicy fruit. Can you blame him for going after those? I can't. I understand the struggle," Sam finally lost control and laughed at the situation.

"I was just violated by your monkey. That's not funny to me," she fussed, but a smile was formed on her face. She was mostly relieved that she hadn't been violently attacked, though his reaction to her was bizarre. Sam wrapped his hands around her waist, pulled her close and kissed her on the lips, tenderly.

"I'm sorry, on behalf of him. He and I are obviously more in tune with each other than I realized."

She gave him an evil side eye and he laughed. "Guide me to your bathroom," she said, reaching for her bag, "Before I sock you and that monkey for treating guests this way!" She chuckled and Sam led her to the bathroom.

"While you're in there, I'll run to the store and get the rest of the stuff and a few other things. You need anything while I'm out?"

"I don't think I do," she said. He touched her hip and kissed her on the lips again before turning to leave. Sam didn't seem like it, but he was nervous as hell... but he was also super duper excited.

Mercedes was the most gorgeous woman that he had seen, or that he could remember, now. He thought that some few days ago, that might not have been a true statement, but it didn't matter – because it certainly was true for him, right now. That woman was a sultry goddess with the face of a masterpiece, a smile of supernatural beauty, lips of an angel, her voice like honey and music and her sinful body was simply a treasure that he wanted to obtain so badly that every part of him ached for it.

That first night, he knew that he was falling for her. He knew that it was quickly rushing out of the crush stage into deep infatuation. But, last night, after she confessed that she wanted him and he spent the next coupelo of hours tasting, licking, sucking and kissing every portion of her body that his mouth had access to, he knew that sex was not his main focal point. He knew that he wouldn't get any amount of adequate rest until Mercedes Jones was his. He hoped that their time together today was going to advance that goal. He hoped that when she gave herself to him, it would bring them closer together and make her want to keep him... and with that much riding on this thing, he couldn't help but to be nervous and scared. But, Sam was an optimistic guy. He also couldn't help but to be hopeful.

Mercedes got out of the shower and fixed her hair. Why was she fixing her hair, when she was just going to mess it all up? Because, she was so nervous that she felt like she was going to vomit, pass out, explode and a long list of other terrible things that she was unsure if this was normal to feel before something like this. She fixed her hair and her makeup and stared at herself. She didn't really have anything else sexy to wear. She had worn most of her stuff over the weekend and had a bag of dirty clothing, but she also still had a few clean articles (in case she'd stayed a bit longer with friends or what-have-you).

After a while, she decided on one of her spare overgrown tee shirts and decided to simply tie a knot into it, on her thigh, to make it catch right around her butt and accentuate her figure. She held her panties for a long time, wondering if it made any sense to put them on, knowing what she and Sam planned to do? She looked into the mirror, looking delicate and all kinds of pretty... holding a big ass pair of drawers and she laughed at herself and threw them at her reflection. "Why the hell is this such a big deal? There are TEENAGERS doing this, no problem. But, here I stand, looking in a mirror, with a damned pair of panties." She shook her head packed all of her stuff away and came out of the bathroom, in the big tee, tied in a knot at her thigh, fresh and clean, with sexy hair and cute makeup. She heard a gasp when she came out and she froze.

When she saw Sam, she smiled. His eyes were brushing over her, passionately and he asked, "Did you make yourself look extra special for little old me?" She wrestled with a smile and he told her, "I'm gonna wash up, very quickly. The bedroom is the last door on the right. You can wait in there for me. If you want, there's a ton of CDs and DVDs and you can put something on. I'll meet you in there." He kissed her on the forehead and she noticed that his eyes hungrily grazed her entire body again, before he rushed into the bathroom and she set her bags back down.

She put on her perfume while she listened to him sing in the shower. The Joker, by the Steve Miller Band... which was obviously how he named his monkey. That just made her think about the monkey, and that made her uncomfortable all over again, so she went into the bedroom and gasped herself when she reached it. Aside from all of the posters and artwork and the life size cutouts of Thor, Storm, Neytiri and Jake Sully, he had a bowl of fruit, on ice on his nightstand, his curtains were pulled to block the sun out, but he had lit several candles to illuminate the room and he had bought a bouquet of flowers, in a vase and when she checked the card, she read: _Here's to being remembered forever and I wouldn't forget you never. _She smiled, and her heart fluttered and she cracked the curtains a little to let some sun in, to see a bit better.

After a moment, she forsook trying to find a CD and elected to eat some of the cherries and berries he had on his table. Right next to the bowl, she noticed the plain old condoms, and that made her anxious again. She began to run through the berries. When Sam entered the room, wrapped in a towel and still damp, he smirked and asked, "What do you think? I was hoping to make it all special and memorable and stuff, like in the movies... I just could really afford to go overboard with it."

He smiled bashfully and she shook her head, "You didn't even have to do this much, Sam. This is all so overwhelming!" She laughed and fanned herself, then put a few more cherries in her mouth. Sam shut the bedroom door and joined her on the bed. He noticed that she was trembling and he took the fruit in her hand and put them in the bowl.

"You do realize that if you don't want to..."

"I'm the one who suggested it in the first place. I want to. I'm just so damned nervous," she confessed, feeling goosebumps all over her body.

Sam nodded and leaned in to kiss her. "I'll get to work on making you feel good," he said into her ear, then kissed her neck and added, "And you tell me whenever you want me to make that move that crosses the line." He gently lowered her to her back and she nodded her head. Sam gently slid his hands up the tee shirt and smirked when he saw that she hadn't bothered with panties. She looked so shy and so sweet. She honestly had no idea how crazy she made him. "I'll be waiting for that green light, Babe. I want you, so bad, and not just sexually. I want to be with you. I want to know you." He moved in to kiss her on the lips and she ground her body against his with a moan.

After the now familiar oral explorations that Sam Evans loved going on Mercedes' body he removed her shirt, completely and marveled at her skin, her shape, the way she still trembled beneath his weight as he now rubbed himself against her, waiting to see if she was ready or willing to give him more. She looked over at the night stand with heavy lidded eyes, and with a shaky hand reached for one of the wrapped condoms. She held it in front of her with both hands, trying not to shake so much and trying to ignore her heart that seemed like it was going to beat out of her chest and kill her, and she pushed the little supply towards Sam.

Sam gave her a gratified smile as he happily accepted it from her hands and he kissed her, and then proceeded to open it and put it on. His heart was going just as crazy if not crazier than hers. Neither of them knew what to expect and to a certain extent, neither knew what to do... but it was about to happen for real, either way.


	7. You Always Remember Your First

**You Always Remember Your First**

When Sam initially pushed inside, he moved quicker than he intended. He knew that it might be uncomfortable for her and for that reason that he needed to move slowly, but also – when he began, he was pretty anxious and may have accidentally been a little too eager. "Ouch!" She hissed when he was about half way inside – which completely brought all of his movements to a halt. He looked at the pained expression on her face and began to withdraw, but she held tightly to him and said, "No, don't move!" He froze and stared at her, worried. She slightly pulled him little by little until he was fully inside and somewhat settled, her face distorted in discomfort the entire time.

He sort of felt bad for the fact that he enjoyed the way that it felt to slide into her body. He kind of felt guilty about the fact that her tight walls wrapped around him gave him the most pleasure that he had ever known. "Are you alright?" He asked, softly.

She looked up at him and noticed that his teeth were dug into his lip and his facial expression was all sorts of struggling, "I'll be okay. Are you in pain, too?" She asked, gently.

"Pain?" He repeated, with a chuckle. "Sorry, I am in whatever the exact and complete opposite of pain is. I wish that you were here, with me. You feel amazing. This is unbelievable. I can't even describe..." She silenced him when she shifted, slightly, trying to reposition her legs. He groaned and reached out to clench the headboard.

"Don't move, yet, please?" She begged, still uncomfortable and hurting from this new expansion of her body. Mercedes moved herself to where she could maybe control the thrusts. She tried to remember how she saw things in the movies and she tried to position herself just right to control this. If Sam moved, he might hurt her, and she was more afraid of that than she was of moving slowly and doing this maybe the wrong way and not being any good for him. She slowly began to try to move herself, to make him slide in and out, at her pace and her level of gentleness. It was difficult, because it hurt. Like. Shit. "Shit!" She hissed.

Sam barely heard her. His entire body felt like it was on slow roast. He was burning up and melting and the torture of how slow she was moving was probably going to kill him in his mind, but damn it! She felt. So. Damn. Good. He whimpered a bit, kind of unable to control it. HE was telling himself to stop making such sounds and to gain some level of control over his heart rate, but all of that information was being demolished somewhere inside of her, as she slowly picked up the pace and his moans and grunts began to practically be sung out of him.

Mercedes looked up into Sam's face, somewhat amused. She didn't even know what the hell she was doing... She only wanted to try to get used to the feeling, but have the control to do it herself. Mercedes was the type of woman who could stand some pain, but only on her own terms. She was starting to get a handle on the initial pain and even though this didn't necessarily feel outstanding, like people bragged, she felt it start to become more rewarding – mostly she was drawn in by Sam's reactions. He was making the oddest sex noises, which she fought off the urge to chuckle at and his face! Sam's eyes were shut tight and his bottom lip was poked out, with his teeth bared and a few times when he grunted, she noticed that his lip sort of went to the side, a little, which made her let out a half giggle and that made him open his eyes and look down at her. "What?" He asked, moving his hands from the headboard to her waist as she shifted her legs, some.

She laughed a bit more now as she moved her own hands from his sides to wrap her arms around his back and she answered, "Your sex faces!" He groaned and couldn't fight off making another face at the sensation her laughter caused around his shaft inside of her. She said, "They're adorable," bit her lip, and held on tight.

"I don't know... that I want to be adorable... at a time like this..." he admitted, with their pace speeding up and Mercedes beginning to moan, now. (She hadn't really been before, more like hissing and making little uncomfortable grunts as she moved; but now, she was moaning). "I want you to think I'm hot," he told her, pumping slowly and gently.

"I do," she managed, tightening her grip around him, with her arms and her legs. It was only then that she realized that at some point, they had transitioned and she had stopped controlling the thrusts. Both of her legs were wrapped around him and he started moving quickly, but gently inside of her. And it felt completely different than it had at the beginning... mostly because her body was getting used to it, but also – they were now looking at each other, very focused in each other's eyes. That just made him want her even more, which was kind of a strange concept, because he already had her; he was having her and he wanted more, he wanted all of her. His gaze was extremely intense and she shyly turned her gaze from his and shut her eyes gently.

It was easier for her to simply enjoy the feeling of him, than to try to deal with that heated stare that she couldn't really figure out. It was alarming to have anyone look so intensely at her. Sam watched her, wishing that she would open her eyes again, but she seemed to be enjoying this, so, he couldn't complain, and he didn't want to _tell_ her to look at him. Would that be okay? "Mermaid?" He called, gently, but he heard the emotion in his own voice. Damn if he didn't sound desperate. But, she didn't open her eyes when he called her.

She simply responded with a, "Hmm?"

"You're so beautiful," he whispered, unable to make himself ask her to open her eyes, to look at him; unable to admit how much he already missed her big brown orbs gazing deeply into his own green eyes. But, when he said this, she opened her eyes for a moment and looked into his with them narrowed and sort of questioning... like she was trying to figure something out. "Believe me. You are," he said and leaned in to kiss her on the lips, then the neck and he let his head linger there as his thrusts increased in speed and urgency. It didn't help anything that her moans grew louder and her arms and legs squeezed him tighter. He was mumbling something into her neck, but all she could actually hear was herself and she was trying not to be so loud, but it simply was not working. Her body was going to explode!

She felt everything intensify and build up, and she knew from Sam's awesomeness via oral, exactly where her body was headed. She reflexively grabbed two handfuls of blond hair into her fist and screamed out loud as the eruption occurred. As her body shook and she heard foreign tongues flying out of her mouth, uncontrollably, she felt Sam's body begin to follow suit, and when it did, her neck became a tasty treat between his teeth. After a moment of heavy breathing and trying to get over the shock of all of the shakes, he lifted his head and looked at her face to see her staring out into the open of the room with a pensive but troubled look.

"You okay, Mermaid?" He asked, concerned.

"You bit me," she said with a pout.

He fought the urge to laugh and retorted, "You pulled my hair."

Now, he could see her fighting the urge to laugh, too, as her cheeks flushed a tad. "Is it supposed to become violent during the climax?" She wondered. Sam rested his head on her chest as he pulled out, slowly and they both winced at those sensations. "I mean, next time, you aren't going to like punch me in the face and I won't like claw off your ear or something?" She joked.

"We aren't monkeys, Mermaid," he said softly, strumming his hand up and down her perspiration moistened side.

"Monkeys do that? Keep your monkey away from me! He already has a crush on me and I'm not trying to get busted in the face by a nasty, horny monkey!" She said, and he couldn't tell if she was joking or not, but she sounded serious. Even though she did, he laughed heartily at her, then he started doing a Brian Fellows impersonation.

"That nasty, horny monkey busted me in the face! That's crazy!" He said and sat up as she laughed. "That was Tracie Morgan, from Brian Fellows' Safari Planet..." She still was laughing, but her eyes showed she had no idea what he was talking about. "Off of SNL!" He said.

She shoved his chest playfully and said, "Get up and go get me a hot towel to help me with this throbbing pain that I have, Sam-Monkey."

Sam smiled and fist pumped, "YES! I have a unique pet name from you! I thought that it'd take longer for you."

"I... I didn't plan on calling you that..." she said as he shuffled out of bed and rushed into his bathroom down the hall.

As he went, he called out behind him, "Tough, Cuddlystuff – because Sam-Monkey is canon, now!"

"Sam-Monkey is canon?" She whispered to herself. "Sam-Monkey is ridiculous..." He came into the room and she shut up and smiled at him. Sam passed her the towel and she placed it on herself and let out a deep moan. "Oh, God. That helps." She watched Sam look down at himself as he studied on removing the condom, then Mercedes heard it pop and watched him topple over hissing expletives. "Sam?" He groaned and rocked from side to side. Mercedes shifted, but kept the towel over herself as she went to check on him, "Sam?" She repeated and placed a hand on his back.

"That was a bad idea," he groaned. Mercedes rubbed his back and he sat up, red in the face – she could tell, even with the slightly lit room, and he held the condom in his hand, dripping onto the carpet.

"Oh!" She said and pointed to it. He turned up his nose and flung it at his little wastebasket, but he missed and it landed on a stack of papers next to it. "Oh!" She repeated, trying not to laugh as he scurried to get it off of whatever it landed on and into the trash. "You should maybe wash your hands," she suggested, trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness that had just been. _Like really? How the hell we make it through the supposed to be terribly awkward sex thing and you mess up removing and disposing of the condom? _She giggled and he glanced at her, but went into the bathroom again.

After a while, he came back with another towel and switched them out for her. "I figured that one was cooled down, now." She smiled brightly at the newly heated towel he put between her legs and nodded. Sam draped the other one over the edge of the wastbasket and moved to wrap himself around her. "Do you realize that we still have most of the day left? I don't even think it's 3:00."

"I vote on food," she said, and reached for the bowl of fruit, but stopped short and stared at her hand. She withdrew it and frowned. "I haven't washed my hands and I'm kind of hurting too much to feel like going down the hall to the bathroom. Sam gave her a small smirk and reached for the bowl of fruit. He positioned himself to be spooned around her, with the bowl in front of her and began to feed her.

"I'll get up and get us some real food in a little bit. Right now, I just wanna be here with you," he told her and kissed her on the side of the neck.

Mercedes realized that it was taking quite some time for her to get into her apartment, but she and Sam had been going at it on and off all afternoon, up into the evening and her walk simply wasn't what it was supposed to be for the moment. He helped her get her stuff inside and when he had, they stood just inside of the door and looked at each other, somewhat shyly. Which caused her a mental laugh, because how the hell could they be shy at this point? _That's easy – he's still a complete fucking stranger and I just made myself his forever..._ "So – I have work in the morning," she said.

"Yeah... and I have work later on tonight," he added. "Did we ever exchange numbers?" He asked. When Mercedes' eyebrows furrowed and her lips puckered, he laughed. They _hadn't. _They'd had sex five times between the hours of 2:30 and 7:30; yet, they did not have possession of each other's contact information. "Trade phones," he said, pulling his out. Mercedes had to dig into her bag for her own and when they traded them, she found where Sam's contact info was and quickly added her name and phone number, and debated on adding her email. Why would he be emailing her? She left it blank and waited on him to finish.

For a moment, Mercedes thought that maybe Sam couldn't figure out how to work her device, because he seemed to be taking an awful long time to add himself. His mouth was open in deep thought as he quickly keyed on her keypad and when he was finished, he looked up at her and smiled. They handed each other their phones back and she smiled, only for him to snap a surprise picture of her. Mercedes gasped and Sam quipped, "Now, I just have to find you a ringtone." He was looking down at his phone and he paused for a moment, like something was wrong, but he didn't say what.

That made her wonder, "That picture came out terrible, didn't it? Let me at least pose for one! Better yet – I'll text you one later, when I've got a really cute one for you to use."

"No, no – t came out great. You're naturally gorgeous," he said, looking up at her with a soft smile and putting his phone away. She could tell that there was still something bothering him and she wanted to ask him what it was. Hell, as far as she knew, they had been completely open with each other all weekend – no need to backtrack, now that they had been sexually interactive. But, when she opened her mouth to ask him what was troubling him, the words wouldn't come out. It was like a switch had been flipped and now she was worried that if she asked him what was wrong or something, she might be overstepping her boundaries, and what if he thought it was because of the sex? What if he thought that now that they had made that move that she was overbearing or wanted to be all up in his business or something?

"Well, thank you," she managed to say and forced a smile. "I guess, I'll see you, maybe?" She wondered.

"Do you _want _to see me again?" He asked and it came out snappier than he intended. She took it the wrong way. She presumed that meant that he didn't want to see her, and she felt embarrassed.

"Oh. Sorry – I just assumed. I thought that we agreed..." She shook her head and opened the door, "Sorry. Guess I'll see you around the shop." Her eyes stung and she felt really, really, foolish. Sam sighed and moved in towards her. She felt herself freeze when he leaned in to kiss her. "I don't do so well with goodbyes."

"I... I'm confused. I think we had a misunderstanding," he said and shut the door for her.

"If we did, it's because you're hiding something," she said. "I mean – I'm trying not to cramp your style or something, but it's clear that something's wrong, and if you don't tell me, then I'm left to have to try to guess."

"Or you could pretend to care and ask," he said.

"Or you could just tell me instead of making me feel like I did something wrong," she retorted, angrily.

Sam sighed and said, "I did something wrong. You're right, there's no need for us to start being closed off to each other. I mean, I'm gonna remember you forever, so we should at least make sure that if we part ways, it's with the best memories. I'm sorry. I didn't say anything, because I felt really silly."

"About what, Sam?" She asked, growing tired of these circles.

"Well.. look at your contact info for me," he said, turning a shade of red. Mercedes sighed and followed the instruction and paused when she pulled up the gray face contact info for "Sam-Monkey." She first paused at the "Sam-Monkey" part and chuckled, then she opened the contact and saw that Sam had filled in pretty much every space that there was with a mobile and two work numbers, his skype info, twitter, tumblr, facebook, myspace? (The hell?), instagram, his home address, his work address... "I felt kind of dumb, when I saw that you only left your number. And, then I felt super dumb, because that's the normal thing to do, right?"

"I don't know," she said. "I might be wrong for only leaving my number," she said with a shrug. "But, I'm not on most of these, anyway..."

"I try to get on all of the social networking sites to push out my comic," he explained.

"Right," she said and nodded, putting her phone away. "Well, I thought that maybe this was goodbye and you didn't know how to handle me or something." She couldn't force herself to add the part that she knew her face would translate: _You had me really worried. _

"You kidding? Trust me, Mermaid, if anybody says goodbye to anybody, it'll be you leaving me. I'm pretty much yours," he told her and gave her a crooked smile. "And you have a damned extensive list of contacts to prove it." She laughed and Sam moved closer to kiss her. Mercedes wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back, deepening it. He moaned and warned her, "If you keep doing that, I might never leave." She laughed into his mouth and softly nibbled on his bottom lip, which prompted him to pin her to her wall as the kiss kept growing.

Her clothes were disheveled and her lips swollen by the time she mustered the courage to open the door for him again, "I... I have to work in the morning... and you..." She paused to catch her breath and nod.

"And I will see you tomorrow, at some point, hopefully," he said and kissed her on the forehead. They stared into each other's eyes for moment, and he finally knew that he had to be strong and go, even though all he wanted to do was sleep in her arms again. He had to work tonight, like he said and he really wanted her to get her rest for work tomorrow – especially because he knew that she would have to face Jacob after that uncomfortable encounter in the store. "Good night, Mermaid."

"Goodbye," she said and bit her lip, trying to prevent having to say it, though she saw this expectation from his expression and he began to circle his hands in front of himself, indicating to her that she was leaving something off. She quietly muttered, "Sam-Monkey," and he fist pumped, which caused her to laugh out loud. As he headed for his truck, she watched him and once he got inside, she shut her door and stiffly began to get ready to go to bed for the night. Hopefully by morning, she would be able to walk properly again...

Mercedes was out cold all night after she got out of the hot bath and when she arose in the morning, she was made aware of two things. One was the alarm that blared through her bedroom which she wished she could karate kick out of a window into heavy traffic. The other was the fact that every single part of her entire body was racking with soreness. She winced as she tried to get out of bed, hurting far worse than she had been the previous night. Damn it if sex was not all it was cracked up to be.

First, she felt like somebody was stretching out her vagina in an extremely unnatural way. Then, she felt like her uterus was being assaulted. Now, every muscle that she had been happily neglecting for the past few years of not really doing anything that demanding with her body was screaming out in horror and disgust at her for making them work the way that they had yesterday and last night. Had it been worth it?

She reached for her phone and saw that she had a couple of texts from Sam-Monkey. The first was from the previous night. It was around 10 pm and he was letting her know that he was going to work for a few hours and wishing her a good night and sweet dreams. She smiled to herself. The second was a good morning text and wishing her well at work. Mercedes set the phone down and willed herself out of the bed. Yeah... it had been worth it, and now, she simply had to do what she had to do and go to work.


	8. Just Messy

**Just Messy**

_Maybe he was being clingy. He was frequently told that he got attached too quickly and moved too fast and it was probably extra true in this case because he knew for a fact that he had never had all of the feelings for anybody that he was feeling for her right now... _"Then Chewbacca humped my brains out. No lie, Dude - mean he pounded my ass!" He heard Puck say and blinked back into attention.

"What?" Sam asked. He had no idea what Puck had been saying before the thing about Chewbacca, but that was enough to pull him out of his state of repetitive phone checking and worrying about Mercedes not texting him back.

Puck scoffed and said, "Dude! You weren't listening to a single word that I said!"

Sam shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, "I'm sorry man. I told you that I didn't get a lot of sleep and I had to work last night... and work was horrible, of course – because it was Monday and my tips sucked." Last night, he understood her not texting back, because it was sort of late and she was probably asleep. But, he texted her this morning before her shift and she was one of those women that took a while to get ready. She would've been up early to get ready, unless she overslept, and even if she had – she could've at least graced him with a 'Thanx' or a 'U 2'. He sighed and rested his cheek on his palm.

"You seem irritated," Puck said.

"I am, but that isn't your fault. I'm just thinking about some things," Sam said. "You, uh... were talking about some argument that you and Quinn had over the weekend?"

"Yeah – and it's still going on. It started when Santana made an off colored comment about Quinn and me looking so good that she didn't know which one of us she would prefer putting in the middle of a Brittana sandwich." Sam rolled his eyes at just the mention of Santana's name. "So, then, I try to brush it off and say something like, _'I'd never let anybody have a piece of my Quinnie.' _ Then, that ditzy ass bubblehead Sugar chick asks Santana, _'But didn't both of you already have a go at Puck when you two were slutting it up around Lima in high school? Naturally, you should pick Quinn, because she'd be something new for you.' _And Quinn looks at me and asks me when in high school did I ever meet or do anything with Brittany or Santana, and Santana tells her, _'Don't worry, Babygirl. It was after the two of you broke up, because you were a Troubletone at the time and you two didn't get back together until you went back to McKinley."_

Sam grimaced, as though in pain and Puck went on, "Yeah – I cheated on Quinn when we were doing that whole live together, but at different schools thing and she found out I cheated and we'd gotten over it... but she didn't know it was with Santana _and _Brittany and she had no idea that it was happening while they were all at the same school, in the same Glee club. I never got around to telling her later, because I thought that it'd never come out and that it would make things awkward, because Quinn still hangs out with them, sometimes. That damned Sugar!"

"She and Santana are both quite frustrating," Sam said and glanced at his phone.

"Dude, who the hell is supposed to be calling you?" Puck wondered.

"Nobody!" Sam snapped, too quickly and emotionally.

"Oh shit!" Puck said, a look of realization on his face. He laughed and repeated, "Oh, SHIT!" He pointed right at Sam's nose and said, "You fucked Mercedes, didn't you? Didn't you? Damn it – I was so wrapped up in this ongoing drama at the house with Quinn that I barely noticed your new little glow and now that I think about it, you walked up to the table a little differently."

"I did not!" Sam said, but he felt his face growing hot.

"You did not what? Fuck her or start walking different?" Puck asked, pulling his phone out.

"What are you doing?"

"Texting the team," Puck said, like it was obvious. "They'll be happy to know that we accomplished our goal, even if you have been checking your phone like Tyrone Biggums waiting for the 5:00 free crack giveaway."

"Don't text anybody, Puck. I'm serious," Sam warned.

Puck pressed a button and said, "Too late, Bro. Why are you trying to hide it? You're a man now. That calls for celebration and I could use one."

"You just had an entire party weekend," Sam commented.

"Yeah, that ended in me getting the silent treatment, the sexless treatment and she took all the porn and condoms and hid them. I mean – if I wanted to cheat, I could go get more rubbers, but what has she done to my beloved porn collection? Our place isn't even really that big to hide such a large container."

"What if she threw them out?"Sam asked.

"You go straight to hell with that kind of talk!" Puck ordered. Sam's phone buzzed and he quickly checked it.

_Congratulations, Sir Sam Evans. Bro Night to commemorate the event? – Mike. _Sam sighed and shook his head. "Y'all are fucking immature," he told Puck, as he replied to Mike: _Puck's jumping to conclusions. I don't know why y'all listen to him_.

Then he got another text, _Are you alright? Was it casual? The two of you still going to see each other? Call me if you need to talk. – Artie. _Sam wiped his hand down his face. "I can't, with you guys." He replied to Artie: _Dude I am FINE! Puck's over here assuming... making asses outta all of y'all. _

Going back to the subject of Puck and Quinn, he asked, "How does Quinn think she have the right to get mad at you for cheating on her in high school when she cheated on Finn with you, then she cheated on me with Finn the next year? It was high school. Tell her to get over it like the rest of us have when it was her being the deceiver."

"If I tell her that, I may never see my porn or that puss again. No, I have to tell her that I was wrong to keep this from her and that I love her and I'd never do anything like that today," Puck said.

"I guess. You were a teenage boy at the time. You're constantly pissing me off... If she just wants to be mad about stuff, I'm sure you give her plenty of chances." Sam said, causing Puck to frown. "By the way, that texting shit – totally uncalled for. I'm getting texts about it, now." Yet, another text came through, and this time it was from Quinn: _Sam, is Puck just trying to get me to talk to him again, or did you and Cedes REALLY have sex?_

_Puck is being a dick, _was his only response. She could take that however she wanted. Sam was tired and about to go home and go to sleep. "I can't believe that in your efforts to be the asshole that you are that you would text that to Quinn," he said.

"I texted it to the whole team, Dude! That was the goal. Everyone should be stoked, especially you!"Puck practically cheered.

"What do you mean the whole team?"Sam asked, in a panic.

"Quinn, Mike, Artie, Tina, Brittany, Tana, and Sugar... I don't think that the quartet was in on it, so I left them out." (The quartet was what Puck called Blaine, Kurt, Jesse and Rachel.

"Puck... You are such a douche! Even if I had confirmed something, which I didn't – you don't have the right to spread something like that!" Sam said and got up to leave the table, storming off and calling Mercedes, at the same time. Was this the kind of thing to leave on her voicemail? No, probably not. He decided that he'd call her at work, then. He didn't want her friends to sideswipe her with the knowledge of what happened between them. Hell, she already wasn't returning his texts – this was probably going to push her all the way over being over him.

When Mercedes unlocked the door, she was extremely pleased by the fact that Jacob was not there. Maybe, he would be so gracious as to not show up today. Maybe it would be just as awkward for him to face her and she would not have to see him right away. She struggled to do all of the opening procedures, as quickly as she could, considering how she felt. She took some pain medicine when she got up, but it only curbed the pain. It didn't kill it.

Two of the employees, Gavroche and Ronnie came in, around the same time and Gavroche asked Mercedes, in all seriousness, "Mercedes – you recognize star potential. Please, indulge us, if you will – in a list of all of the comic book hero roles that Robert Pattinson would qualify for."

Ronnie rolled her eyes at the tall, skinny male and said, "There's no way that Cedes is going to cosign some bull like that. Pattinson is around to look like a broody teenage vampire and to sparkle! Every comic book character in history would beat the glittery shit out of him."

"Hey, hey, hey! Mercedes fussed. "Are you dissing Edward Cullen or are you dissing Robert, because you know that Gavroche and me don't play that when it comes to Robert!"

Gavroche added, "Or Edward!"

"Naw..." Mercedes said and shook her head, "You're on your own, with that. Look, guys – I hurt myself over the weekend, so I am going to be at the counter today, alright? Alright."

"Aww, Mama – what'd you hurt yourself doing?" Ronnie wondered.

"Oh, we had all kinds of stuff going on this weekend – dancing, water gun drinking fights, pool volleyball, Midnight Pajama Freeze Tag..."

"The hell?" Ronnie asked.

"Yeah. Try spending a weekend with a drunk ass Sugar Motta. 'The Hell?' literally becomes as common as breath." Mercedes checked the schedule and told them, "When Strando and Brett come in, you two can take lunch at 1:00."

"You gonna join us and maybe talk about those marks on your neck that you've haphazardly covered with that scarf?" Gavroche teased.

Mercedes frowned and said, "Fix it." He laughed and immediately helped her out with it.

"Yeah, some of these marks are older, by maybe a couple of days but this horrible one here... were you bitten?" He asked.

"Oh my God!" Ronnie cheered, "Did you mate with a Vulcan?" Her eyes were lit up and her smile was wide.

"You two are crazy," Mercedes said, refusing to answer either of them.

After a couple of hours of keeping herself posted behind the counter and basically catching up on some reading, the phone rang and she answered, "Completely Nerdgasmic Comics, you're talking to the HNIC – Head Nerd in Charge." HNIC, in this context was the equivalent of the Manager on Duty and fortunately, Jacob had not shown up.

"It's weird. I must have heard you answer this phone like that a hundred times in the past couple of years, but now, it sounds different. Can you talk real quick?" Sam asked.

"I guess so. Generally, Jacob doesn't want us to have personal calls, but he hasn't shown up today and I can't say that I'm bothered by that."

"So... Puck and I got together around 11, because he wanted to vent about some stuff and at some point in time he came up with this idea – with no confirmation from me, at all – that you and I have had sex... and he was a dick and texted it to everybody from the party but the quartet."

"He what?" She practically yelled in Sam's ear.

"I've been eluding texts about it for the past few minutes and I was worried that you might be getting them too. I didn't want you to think that I was out here bragging. I mean – it's worth bragging about, but I wouldn't do that to you," he said.

Mercedes took a deep breath and glanced at Ronnie and Gavroche, pretending to sort through comics while they were really just watching her and trying to figure out what had just made her so upset on the phone. She turned her back to them and said, "I don't ever keep my phone on me while I'm on the clock, so I don't know if anybody has bothered me about it yet, or not, but I could punch the shit out of Puck for that. What the hell is wrong with him? Santana wouldn't even do that shit! And who are the quartet?"

"That's Rachel, Jesse, Kurt and Blaine," he answered.

"So, basically, Puck told everybody that I might actually care about having that information," she commented.

"I haven't confirmed it. I just told everyone that Puck jumped to conclusions, which he did. You don't have to tell them anything," Sam said.

"The problem is that I'm transparent as hell," she said. "And damn it, what if somebody stops by to see me?" She wondered.

"What's wrong?" He wondered.

"I woke up more sore than I was last night. I took some pills and I've been posted in one place all day, but..."

"You're sore? I'm sorry," he said. "I probably was too anxious and didn't take the proper care. I'll go get you some soaking salts and bring them by, for you."

"You don't have to do that," she said.

"I want to. Will you allow it?" He asked.

"Yeah. I'd be a fool to turn down help with the way that I feel... It's not _always _going to be like this, right? I mean – this is probably just because it's new to me, huh?" She questioned him.

"I think so, Babe." She heard the door open and her eyes widened when she saw Jacob finally coming in and here she was, on a personal call... with Sam!

"I gotta go!" She quickly said and hung up the phone. If Jacob didn't stop, she was not going to address him. She started digging under the counter, busying herself with a bunch of damned nothing.

"Miss Jones! How are you this morning?" She heard Jacob's voice ask. She peeked out to flash a smile and try not to groan as she did.

"I think its afternoon, now, Jacob. Late start today, eh?" She asked, trying to remain cool.

"Yeah. Busy weekend, tough night – but you appear alert and prepared for a hard day's work!" He said, with his ears a little red.

"It's an illusion," she said, with a chuckle. "I had a pretty long weekend, myself."

"I can believe that," he said. "I'm going to have Ronnie take over the register and I want to talk to you in my office." She bit her lip and smiled while she nodded. When she began to walk, it was the first that Ronnie, Gavroche or Jacob had seen her walking all day. Try as she might, she simply could not play it off, all the way.

"I think she did mate with a Vulcan," Gavroche told Ronnie as Jacob waited for Mercedes to reach the office, before he followed her inside and shut the door.

"Jacob?" She said and he sighed. "Is there something wrong?" She asked. She totally knew that their encounter in the pharmacy was hella uncomfortable for both of them, but nothing that she could get called into his office for, right?

"I... have a business arrangement with Sam Evans. You do realize that, right?" He asked.

"Yes, I realize that," she said.

"And while I can't have any say over what you people do when you leave here, I hope that you understand that I don't expect you or Sam to be anything less than professional when he is here to do business," Jacob said.

"Yeah, Jacob – of course. What kinda stuff? When have I ever been unprofessional around Sam?" She wondered.

"Well, you haven't, exactly. But, I always thought that there was something going on between the two of you, because of all of the looks and the sexual tension. I just had no idea that either of you had acted upon it." Jacob looked quite nervous and extremely flustered as he said, "You can hardly move today, and that just paints images in my head!" He shook his head and pushed up his glasses. "How long has this been going on?" He asked.

"That's none of your business, as we've already established that neither of us have been unprofessional on these premises," she replied, her tone laced heavily with sass.

"And you'd better make sure that doesn't change. I won't tolerate unprofessionalism in my establishment between my business associates and employees!" Jacob snapped at her. "You can go." Mercedes wished that she could flank quickly and storm off, but even pissed off beyond imagination, she spun around too quickly, and almost fell to the floor in agony. She hissed and caught herself against the door. She didn't even want to glance at Jacob to see how he might be looking at her as she swung the door open and walked away as fast as her aches would allow.

By lunch time, she grabbed her purse and debated on whether or not she would come back for the rest of her shift. Sometimes, she could take a half a day, if Jacob was on site and she had something she needed to take care of. She needed to take care of her body! On her way out of the shop, she checked her phone and saw numerous messages. Before even checking any, she jumped on the phone, first with Santana, "Why, you little hot mama!" Santana said. "I knew that you were gonna give Guppy Lips all the business when you busted dat ass in shower!"

"You don't know anything. Puck made an assumption and texted that out to everyone," Mercedes said.

"What's wrong with you, Mama Cedes?"Santana asked.

"This is just another turd on an already shitty day," she said.

"What happened? Did Trouty blow you off?" Santana asked, ready to gut herself a fish.

"No, girl, please! It's Jacob, my boss. He was a real asshole to me today. He saw Sam and me when we got back into town and tried to give me this speech about unprofessionalism in his place of business."

"Unprofessionalism? Does that elf know that he owns a comic book store?"

"That's not the point. The point is that it's not his damned business – is the point. It's not his business, Puck's business, none of your damned business!" She snapped.

"Well, damn. I guess you _didn't _get none. You are way too uptight," Santana commented.

"Yeah, I am. Tell everybody to leave me the hell alone about this. Because I will bust some asses if my day continues on in the way that it has been. I'm going to lunch. You enjoy the rest of your day," she said and hung up the phone. "Who else? Who else needs to get some?" She checked her messages, then saw that she had missed calls from Sam-Monkey, earlier, and just a moment ago? Hmm... she hadn't heard the alert, but she called him back. "Hey."

"Hey... Are you feeling any better?" He wondered.

"No. You were right. I had texts from everybody's nosy ass on my phone and I just had to exchange words with Santana and almost had some pretty choice words for Jacob's ass, earlier."

"What'd _he_ say to you?" Sam asked, defensively. She heard a hint of anger in his voice and it made her shudder, pleasantly. Sam was pretty damned good at that protective thing.

"Don't even worry about it. I understand where he was coming from, but I wasn't prepared for it."

"Where was he coming from?" Sam asked, sounding even more irritated than before. "Mercedes, if he's giving you trouble, let me know."

"He's not. I think that I'm just frustrated because I didn't have a chance to recuperate. Don't worry about it, okay?" She heard him let out a deep breath and she could almost imagine him biting his lip with frustration. "Okay, Sam-Monkey?" She asked, sweetly and heard him let out a soft chuckle.

"Okay, Mermaid. But, if it becomes an issue, I want you to come to me."

"Agree," she said.

"What time are you getting off of work?"

"It's supposed to be 6, but I'm thinking about not going back after my lunch break."

"When do you have lunch?" He asked.

"I'm on break, now," she told him.

"Well, I'm out and about – you wanna meet up?" He asked.

"You know – that might be very, very good for me. I kind of miss you," she said, and scrunched her face up, as she let the words come out.

Sam let out what sounded like a relieved sigh and he told her, "That's good, because I've missed you, too."


	9. Suds and Secrets

_I apologize to those of you that I told this chapter would have drugged up/loopy Cedes in it... As it turns out, that was gonna make the chapter too long, so that'll be next chapter. _

**Suds and Secrets**

On her way to meet up with Sam for a bit of food, Mercedes called Jacob to let him know that she had no intention of returning for the rest of her shift and it didn't hurt her feelings one bit. "I'm hurt and I'm not coming back, not today, at least." She told him.

"Well, get better," he said.

"You too!" She replied and hung up on him. He probably was going to harp on her commnet for the rest of the day and she hoped that he gave himself hives wondering what she meant by telling _him _to get better. _Let him chew on that – allowing himself to navigate within the domain of MY business! He better do better. _

Almost as soon as she got off the the phone and was getting into her car, she got a call from Quinn. "Hey, Q!" She cheered and threw her purse into the passenger's seat. "I can guess what you're calling about," she sang, with a hint of 'Don't even go there' in her voice.

"I know what Puck did to you today and trust me, he's going to have hell to pay when I see him," Quinn promised.

"I mean, who does he think he is. Now, Quinn, you love a love you like a sister, but I don't know your man like that for him to A. be up in my business and B. to SPREAD my business. Did he think this was funny?" Mercedes ranted, starting the car up.

"That's just it. More often than not, that idiot doesn't think. He's got it coming to him for this one, though. He was already in the doghouse. He's about to be underneath it." Quinn sighed, bit her lip and hesitantly asked, "So, are you okay?"

Mercedes thought about the question for a moment. Quinn was her sister. It had been years, but ever since they lived together in high school, Mercedes had Quinn had always retained the feeling of sisterhood and love that grew between them. So, Mercedes honestly answered, "No. I'm in a lot of pain and I can barely walk. I feel like something beat the living hell out of me. Is that normal?"

Quinn sighed as Mercedes indirectly confirmed her actions with Sam and told her, "It's different for different people. For me, my vagina hurt for a day or so and my thighs were sore a couple of days. But, it wasn't obvious. No one could tell. I did my kicks, splits and flips, up until it was found that that I was pregnant." They both were quiet.

"Well, Sam's going to get me something to soak in, to help with the soreness. Hopefully, it will make everything go away. Today has been hell and I hate that my first time yielded this mess."

Quinn said, "My first time was enough to hate, in and of itself. I was pressured and I was guilty. I was cheating and I was sinning, so literally the entire time, along with how uncomfortable it was, I was distracted from even the pleasant parts of it, by regret."

Mercedes told her, "I was mostly distracted by physical pain."

"Well, Sam is pretty big," Quinn commented, then quickly said, "Puck went through this weird phase of pantsing people at random times. One random time, while Sam was in a pair of sweat shorts, commando..." Quinn laughed and shook her head, "So, anyway – with him being sizeable and you being new, I'm not surprised that it would hurt, even if he was moving slowly and carefully."

Mercedes smiled to herself and said, "After the initial pain of it, there were more good things than bad. I'm kinda conflicted, Quinn. I think that I actually like Sam, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a guy."

"Do what feels right. I mean, the worse that could happen is you could be wrong. But, at least if you're wrong, you don't end up wondering why the hell you stayed with Noah Puckerman," Quinn said, angrily.

"You love Puck," Mercedes said.

"Against my better judgment," Quinn laughed. "You'll understand when you fall in love. You can love and hate the same person, at the same time, sometimes," Quinn said.

"Uh, yeah – because I definitely have 'falling in love' on my to-do list," Mercedes said, and pulled into a parking spot. She climbed out of her car and saw Sam and immediately forgot what she was saying. Her heart fluttered in her chest, something fluttered in her stomach and her knees sort of gave out, for a moment. Fortunately, she caught herself on the car. Then she broke into Quinn's speech about love finding you or something else she hadn't actually been listening to and told her, "Gotta go, Quinn. Love ya." She hung up and walked over to meet up with Sam.

Sam and Mercedes ended up back at Mercedes' apartment, after they had lunch. He felt horrible when he saw how hurt she appeared to be, but she kept assuring him that she would be fine. Lunch had gone pretty well. When she approached, the first thing she said was, "I'm sorry that I didn't get back to you when you texted me. I was going to do it after I got ready for work, but I ended up taking longer to do EVERYTHING than usual today, and by the time I got to work, I put my phone in my purse."

"I understand," he told her. "Next time, hopefully, you'll have a chance to respond," he said, smiling. They sat, ate, talked, then she headed home and he followed, having already gotten her supplies that he promised her.

She opened her cabinet in the bathroom to see if she had anything other than the pills she took earlier, as Sam drew some bath water for her. He heard her gasp and he looked up at her as she snatched a bottle of prescription pills from behind the mirror. "I still have muscle relaxers from when I fell and hurt my wrist a while back!"

Sam got up as she dropped a couple of them into her palm and put the bottle down. When she reached for the glass that she generally used to rince her mouth in the morning, Sam examined the bottle. "Are these safe? They're expired."

"Expired?" She repeated. "Safe? Sam, pills – not milk. I'm taking two and I should be fine by tomorrow." She poured herself a cup of water.

Sam wasn't done. "You need two? You were a lightweight with alcohol. Do you have a high tolerance for medicine?"

"No... nor do I have a high threshold for pain. So, two it is," she said and threw the pills in her mouth and drank the water. Sam folded his arms, not that happy about her taking possible bad medication.

"Is there anything that you need me to get?" he asked.

"If you don't mind, there's a kimono in my third top drawer," she said, with a smile as she began to undress for her bath. Sam watched her, for a moment, until she looked at him and shyly smiled. "What?"

"You're just... really beautiful," he admitted, then set off to find her robe for her. When he went into the drawer, he saw it on top and picked it up. With it came a few other articles of clothes and he dropped several pairs of panties on her carpet. He sighed and retrieved them. When he was about to replace them, he saw a framed contract for a record deal. He squinted at it and placed the panties aside to see it better. It was from the year that Mercedes graduated. "Hmm," he said and left the room. "Hey, I accidentally spilled some of your panties and I saw that you were signed to a label?" He asked, with a wide smile.

Her entire countenance fell. She was already in the tub, and with all of the bubbles, he couldn't really see her body, but she looked like she tensed up when he mentioned it. "Uh, yeah – I had a short deal with a company as a backup singer. It's nothing to write home about. I did it for a spell while I was in California, after graduation. It didn't work out. I got a job until I could save up enough to move back home and here I am." She shrugged.

"Why didn't it work out?" He wondered as he sat down on the fluffy, purple covered toilet seat. "I mean, your voice is fantastic, so it couldn't have been a lack of talent. Were there simply few opportunities?"

"Well, I was singing back up, so much of the time, people weren't checking for me, anyway, but then there's also that I was in a group in which the front woman was designed to look like "the next Beyonce," even thought to me, she was like Lauren London with blond hair, and the other two backup singers looked like Tika Sumpter and Kelly Rowland."

"Um... I know who Beyonce is," he said.

"Basically, all the rest of the group were these thin, shapely, really hot ladies and I was... me." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I had never been so self-conscious about the way that I looked before. They told me all the time that I was beautiful and just as hot and I'd thought that at first, but the fans could be harsh. We weren't even famous! When we did photo shoots and appearances, our promoters always tried to get me to wear something that covered up more of me than the others or put me in the back and cover me up with the other three. I got sick of it and I left... then I wasn't able to get my own footing in the industry. I thought that I was doing something good for myself by walking away, but it was a mistake and I blew my dream. What was worse – I actually came back here." She rested her head against the back of the tub and asked, "Can you grab me something to drink from the fridge?" He heard tears in her voice and he nodded and went.

Mercedes had left after a big argument with management and producers. She had just as much talent as the other ladies (more, if she would have been honest), but because she didn't look a certain way, she had to be thrown in the back and cast aside, at every turn? The other background singers begged her not to do this, assuring her that if she just stuck it out and paid her dues that she would get her props, eventually. "I'll get my props and pay my dues somewhere else," she said, before storming out, sealing her fate.

When he came back, toting a bottle of V8, she frowned, but accepted it. She made the mistake of going grocery shopping with her mother a few days ago and was forced to come home with an abundance of things that she would never purchase nor masticate on her own. However, seeing as how her mother bought so much stuff, she didn't feel right _not _consuming it. "Thanks," she said and took a sip with a grimace. He watched her confused, "My mom says that I'm not healthy enough, so she filled up my kitchen with a bunch of things that she found acceptable." He smiled and resumed his seat on the toilet.

"I think that I'll hang around a while, in case you need a gofer or in case your bad machine causes a not good reaction," Sam said.

"It's just medicine. I'm sure it's fine."

"It has to have an expiration date for a reason," he said.

"I guess so, but taking expired medicine never hurt me before," she said, "I just forgot that I had those. Are you sure that you want to be a gofer? That job sucks. I was one for over a year before I got back to Lima. Well, they called it personal assistant, but it was some gofer ass shit," she said, a little bit breathily. Sam smirked. The medicine must have been kicking in on her.

"You were a personal assistant? Anybody famous?" He asked.

"Yeah – well... to you. This guy named Jeremiah Stapp," she said.

Sam's eyes widened. "Jeremiah Stapp? THE Jeremiah Stapp, the youngest comic book creator currently at Marvel?" He asked.

"Yep. After I left the group, Treasure, I was doing small singing gigs here and there at nightclubs and stuff. He came in with some other guys from Marvel and his current assistant and him had a big ass argument and she ran off. I jumped in and asked if he needed to fill the position. That's how I know about all this nerd stuff. I gotta admit, at first, I'd sideeye the hell out of him, but we ended up having all these sci-fi and cartoon marathons and stuff, and I ended up as big a nerd as him!" She laughed and said, "You two would get along really great. Maybe one day, I can introduce you."

"Are you kidding me, right now? You're still in communication with him?" He asked.

"Well, we follow each other on Twitter. I keep up with his career and stuff and sometimes, he sends me direct messages to complain about something or thank me on something. I get retweeted by him a lot," she said.

"How could you not tell me that you know a successful comic book creator?" He wondered.

"That didn't come up, like at all," she said. "Anyway, I try not to talk about that too much, because I don't want all those folks at the shop trying to get me to introduce them to people or something. I still have my old pass that I used to get in and out of Marvel," she said, making Sam wave his hands all around and flail a bit. "I'll show it to you, later."

"Thank you! That's really cool of you. I've been wanting to work for Marvel for years!"

"You could totally make it. Your work is far better than any of Jeremiah's," she commented. "But, what other work do you do? You said you had to 'go to work,' last night, and I guess it just occurred to me that you can't possibly make all your money by selling your comics in the shop."

"Oh... I ... work at a bar," he said and nodded his head.

"Really? You serve drinks?" She ask.

"No. Actually, I dance. Um, I strip," he said, making the decision to just say it. She burst out laughing. "Why is that funny?"

"Because you're a virgin, comic book nerd boy who strips!" He didn't know how to feel about her reaction. It might have been because she was drugged up, but she really seemed giddy about it, when most women, especially women like her who easily fell into the "good girl" category looked down on him for it and generally ran in the other direction. "Do you dress like a storm trooper and take off your uniform?"

"No... but that sounds very interesting," he told her with a smile.

Her face straightened out and her eyes widened. "Sam-Monkey!" He was alarmed by the way that she sat up and looked at him, "You TOTALLY have to do that for me, one day!" She said, then fell back laughing and began splashing around, damned near drowning herself before he rushed to rescue her. It only seemed to make her laugh more and she added, "And I want you to dance to Space Jam, by the Quad City DJ's!"

Sam chuckled and helped her settle in the tub again.

He watched her turn into a medicated mess. He'd been thinking about her confession about her failed dream and it hurt his feelings, a bit. When he wondered why she had lost her confidence, she blamed her breakup with her ex. Maybe that had been the beginning of it, but he believed that the real reason she had shrank so much in her boldness was because of what happened in L.A. It made sense now. It wasn't easy to be confident after a small failure, but to feel like you screwed up your chances at living out your dreams? He smiled at her as she ran her little feet up and down the shower wall.

By the time he helped her get dry and into her kimono, her hair was up in the clip still, but wet. He dried her hair for her and brushed it down, over her shoulders, while they both watched the mirror... though she watched it with heavy eyelids. "It... does it really not bother you that I'm a stripper?" He asked. "Usually, it bothers women."

"It's just a job. Santana did it through college and it never affected her relationship with Brittany, so I just assume it's nothing to worry about... but you bringing it back up makes me worry, though," she said, her eyes hardly able to remain open.

"You have nothing to worry about, Mermaid. I won't lie and tell you that I've been totally innocent on the job, but I'll tell you that right now, I wouldn't do anything that would hurt you."

She turned around and looked at him, "You've messed around with the clients?"

"They aren't _clients, _they're patrons and sometimes I can get more cash in the VIP rooms, if I'm extra friendly to them. But, I'm telling you right now that nothing like that is happening while we're..." he stared at her. She could hardly focus and he didn't even know if she would remember this tomorrow. "How about we discuss this when you're clear headed, k?" She nodded and let him help her to her bedroom.

It was nice to lie down with her again, just holding her, but he was stressed out. He didn't know how his confession might affect them tomorrow. He didn't want her to turn on him, but it was never meant to be a secret... not with anyone he was involved with, and even though they still weren't labeling anything, they were definitely involved.


	10. Her Body is Betraying Her

_I so apologize to all of y'all. Y'all know that normally, I would've had so many updates completed by now. But, I recently switched department at work, learning new stuff, working strange hours and keeping up with my younger sister while my folks are out of town. I've wanted to update everything, but real life, y'all know..._

**Her Body is Betraying Her**

"Sam, I want a pet. I want a turtle, or a BUNNY!" She said, excitedly, seemingly trying to sit up. Sam chuckled slightly and pulled her back down onto her bed. She needed to sleep this medication off, but she seemed like she was fighting her body's attempts to get some rest. "I'm going to train them to fight, cover them in ooze and have them defeat crime in the city."

"You are going to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortoise and Hare?" He asked, softly, his eyes creased from his own tiredness as he smiled at her.

"NOO! It's gonna be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Bunny," she said.

"Go to sleep, Mermaid," he said, as he strummed his fingers down her face, shutting her eyes for her.

"I'm not sleepy," she said, but began to doze off. Sam shut his eyes too. He had gotten off at 3 am, gone home, washed up, spent some time with Maurice, ate, then tossed and turned as he realized that this was the first night after the privilege of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, that he would not wake up wrapped around Mercedes. He probably fell to actual real sleep around 5 am, only to have Puck call him bright and early to ask him about catching an early lunch later on, because he needed to get some things off of his chest. Sam texted Mercedes, good morning, and went back to sleep until around 10 am and had been up since.

He met Puck at 11. He left to get in touch with Mercedes, then went to the store to get some things for her, to help her to feel better, and by the time they met up, he had been running around all morning.

That might not have been so bad if he had not spent most of his previous day giving her something she could feel and several hours of his night working for peanuts. His entire body was exhausted and he just needed to get some proper rest, just like she did. He was drifting into sleep when Mercedes tapped him on the cheek. "Hmm?" He mumbled, a bit agitated and kind of grumpy.

"I got a question," she whispered.

"Whatisit?" He grumbled.

"If my coochie was a color, what color would it be?" She asked. Sam's eyes immediately opened to see the side of her head. She was lying on her back, studying the ceiling, with a serious look on her face.

"Your... um... your coochie IS a color, It's um, like brown on the outside and perfectly pink in the middle. Like the ideal steak," he said, half asleep. She snickered.

"No! Not what color should my coochie be... I'm asking like if it was a color _instead_ of a coochie, but I want the color to, you know, to reflect the current personality of my coochie, too." He stared at her, just confused, as she continued, "I'll say royal purple, because it's stellar and like REGAL. I like to think of my coochie as nobility," she said and nodded. Sam turned his face towards her pillow to laugh at her and how serious she seemed to be considering this. "Speaking of – why do folks say eating a peach? You kiss me after you're dining down there and this thingy does not taste like no peach!"

"Well, it sort of does, a bit. But, I think it's more of a characteristic thing than a flavor thing. Like, because the "coochie"(she giggled when he said the word) is soft and fuzzy with a sweet and tangy nectar in it." He let out a deep, rugged breath, just thinking about hers, "And, can we talk about something else? Because talking about eating a peach with you right next to me is doing something to me. Or better yet – aren't you sleepy? You took two muscle relaxers. You had a long day yesterday. I know that you're tired."

"I'm alright. I'll fall asleep when my body gives up." She began to sing, "Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lotta peaches. I'm movin' to the country, gonna eat me a lotta peaches..." She and Sam began to sing _Peaches _by The Presidents of the United States, together as they lie down. Sam began to fall to sleep and Mercedes interrupted with, "My favorite pancakes are with peaches and whipped cream on top and honey instead of syrup." Sam sighed and chuckled. Now, he believed that she was purposefully keeping him awake. Maybe she just wanted company. He was a guest. It would be rude for him to go to sleep on her, but he wanted both of them to get some sleep.

"Those pancakes sound like you, Mermaid. Peaches and cream and honey. If we're ever in a group of friends and stuff and I get in the mood, I'm gonna tell you that it's time for your favorite pancakes," Sam said.

Mercedes laughed, but went silent for a moment before asking, "Do ladies dance where you dance at?"

"No. Only men where I dance," he said, uncomfortable that they were back on this subject.

"I've never been to one. Maybe I can come in and watch you dance one night?" She asked. He didn't say anything about that. "There was that song, one time – I ain't got no panties on. I ain't got no panties on. I ain't got no panties on, on the dance floor..."

"Um... subject matter..." he warned, but she kept talking.

"Why ain't she wearing some damned draws, Sam? And she's dancing too? The club is hot and there are bodies everywhere. After all that, when she walks by your table, all they'll smell is sweat and ass!" Mercedes shook her head and turned up her nose, which caused Sam to laugh. She was so damned high out of her mind and obviously a sleep fighter. He used to be one when he was a child, but since his teenage years, he cherished every moment of his sleep.

Mocking her, he said in a low, deep, voice, "Midgets, dwarves, muthafuckin' unicorns... them muthafuckas don't wanna see a black man make it..." before he could get the announcement of 'Method Man from How High' out, Mercedes broke out into a sky-ripping cackle that he was sure would erase all of her ability to breathe. "I take it you saw that movie?" He asked.

"No. I have no idea what you were talking about. You are too funny, though and she took a deep breath. "Sam, if we had gone to high school together, I have a feeling that you could've got it."

"I could've gotten what?" He asked, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

She laughed and said, "A taste of my favorite pancakes!"

He laughed a little, too and repeated, "A taste? That's all you would have given me?"

"In high school, yeah," she said.

"Hmmm... I don't know if I would've been able to deal with that. I'm hooked on it, now and I have much more reserve today than I did as a sixteen year old."

"Soooo... you are suggesting that if you had gotten a taste, you would've had to try to dive into the honeypot?" She asked.

"I definitely would have been trying to, probably every day," he said.

"You probably could've got it," she said, with a shrug.

He smiled and said, "Babe, if we had done that in high school, we would be married today." She couldn't reply. She simply stared at him with tired eyes. "You look so drained. Why don't you go to sleep?"

"I don't want you to leave," she said, simply, in a tiny voice. "If I go to sleep, I don't know when I'll wake up. What if by the time I wake up, you're gone?" She asked, pouting her lip.

"Aww, Mermaid," he said and moved in closer to her, snuggling with her, tightly. "I'm not going to go anywhere. I promise. But, you need to go to sleep, because I need to sleep too, and you are crazy as hell, right now. I am going to make all kinds of fun of you when you're off of the loopy meds." She giggled, shaking in his arms, as she did; but she soon fell to sleep and he followed after her.

The conversation did not come up again. Mercedes did not care to have to try to talk about something like that, when she had already told him that it was just a job to her. She was not lying about that. Santana danced as a stripper for literally her entire college career. She spent most of her days in audition, took night classes and when she left night class, went directly into the club to shake that money maker. According to her, for a few measley hours she got muchos big dollars.

But, Sam had implied that he did other stuff with the patrons, too. That made her suspicious and self-conscious. Before they ever had sex, it had already been established that he knew what the hell he was doing with a woman's body, unlike her. He blamed it on porn and hentai, but she wondered if some life experience made an impact on his magic hands and miracle mouth, too? "Can't go wrong with Scott Pilgrim VS the World," Sam said, from his bed while Mercedes was in the midst of what had become a pretty regular habit of spending a great amount of time trying to pick out a movie. Sam was just teasing.

He didn't mind how long it took her, at all. They usually spent the time it took her to choose a movie talking and getting to know each other better.

Now, three weeks into whatever their relationship was, they were pretty much -comfortable with each other. Mercedes had on a big T-shirt, like she generally wore to bed, and he was in a pair of boxers, making sure that Maurice remained in his possession, because it seemed that the monkey would not be deterred from whatever treasures he seemed convinced await in the bosom of Miss Mercedes Jones.

However, at night when they went to sleep, Sam allowed Maurice the freedom to nestle himself there and he only moved when she woke up and tapped Sam, who would remove him, or when Sam got up and caught him, himself.

He couldn't blame the little guy. They were cuddly, but it made her uncomfortable, especially after she researched the dangers of pet monkeys... Sam playfully fussed, "You're always researching something on your own!"

She simply laughed and reminded him, "I'm always doing everything on my own."

"Well, it doesn't have to be that way anymore," he told her. But, Mercedes was not quickly being taken away into some fairy tale.

In the past three weeks, she and Sam spent most of their nights together. She worked from 8 am to 3pm (sometimes 9am - 6pm), Monday through Thursdays, afternoons on Fridays and Saturdays (sometimes 9-6) and was off on Sundays. Sam worked Thursday through Monday nights from 10pm to 3am. He generally slept from 4 or 5 am until noon or 1 pm.

Now, with Mercedes in his world, she slept over, frequently, so that if he did have to work that night, she was either asleep when he left, or on her laptop when he left (then sleep when he got back). He generally came home, showered and climbed into bed with her, sometimes getting lucky before he got some rest, sometimes, too tired to do anything but hold her and pass out.

She either was gone by the time that he woke up the next day, and on those days, he got up, worked out and ate, then worked diligently on his comics for the next few hours. Or, he woke up early enough to get lucky before her shift and get himself some sexual sleep aid for his day of rest, before she got off. She'd brought all of those groceries that her mom forced on her to his place and he'd appreciated it – because he loved that stuff, but whole foods and organics and such were simply out of his budget, for the moment. He made a lot of money, but he saved most of it for his comics business.

While he let Mercedes know that she could come over whenever she wanted to, and even told her where he kept his spare key hidden; and even though he left her there, asleep or otherwise, frequently, she always asked for permission to come over. That irritated him, but at the same time, he found it cute. They had been sexing each other up and down on the regular for the past three weeks, and she still had this shyness about her, that he knew he no longer carried. Shy time had ended for him. He didn't even feel silly when he did stuff that could be viewed as overbearing, anymore. Nope – he was comfortable, happy, content.

He had no idea what could have been going through her head. Mercedes was happy, she couldn't lie. She was even comfortable, for the most part. But, content might not be on the list of things that Sam Evans made her feel. For one thing – he seemed so much further along in his attachment than she felt. It could be a bit disconcerting when he said things like, "You can stay over forever, if you want to." She knew that it was probably an exaggeration, but the way that he gazed at her during or after such comments... She couldn't explain or understand it.

The other thing – even though she had no problem with his job, she had trouble with the whole, extra money in the VIP rooms stuff. She had no idea what that meant and felt like she really didn't have a right to ask. After all, it was in his past and he had promised that he would not be carrying on that way. Everything didn't come back to her immediately, but she remembered all of the stuff from the bathroom the night she was jaded on old pills. (She couldn't remember a thing about the bedroom, but desperately hoped that the things that Sam was teasing her about saying were untrue.)

As she finally decided on Eyes Wide Shut (because as much as Sam loved that movie, it made her want to go to sleep), and she had to open the store in the morning. She put it on and climbed into bed. "You're trying to go to sleep," he commented, when he realized what she had put in.

"It works better for me than pills," she commented.

"I still can't believe that you feel that way about it," he said. "And yet, you can watch The Vampire Diaries," he teased.

3 AM, or maybe a few minutes later, she jumped up out of bed, alert to the fact that she was wet. She rushed out of bed and into the bathroom down the hall, unsure of whether or not she had woke him or alarmed him when she got up. However, when she went into the bathroom, sat down and peeked, she frowned and cussed under her breath. "Mercedes?" He groaned, from outside of the door. "S'everything alright?"

"Could you grab my bag out of the living room and sit it right outside of the door for me, please?" She asked.

"Yeah, Babe," he told her and she heard his feet shuffling across the carpet. It annoyed her when he did that, but tonight, it was heightened. She didn't say anything, until he said, "I got it. You want me to bring it in."

"No! Didn't I ask you to leave it outside the door?" She snapped at him.

"Yeah... sorry. Okay... It's out here," he said and she could hear the hurt and confusion in his voice. She waited until she heard his feet drag back into the bedroom and his door to shut before she snatched the bag up so that she could wash up, change and put on a damned maxi pad. For whatever reason, her cycle was a few days early, but she was still prepared. Yet, she hadn't really thought about how she would react and respond with Sam, during this time.

Damn – this was another dimension of her womanhood – one that he probably wouldn't be too comfortable with. And even if he was, she definitely wasn't. Theen, when she thought about it, she hoped and prayed that she had caught it in time and had not made any type of stain on his sheets, or worse – his mattress! Ugh! Now, she was groggy and annoyed. Sam was seated up in his room when she came in, fully dressed and began to search his bed.

"Hey – why are you dressed? And what are you looking for?" He asked, confused. Oh, good – the coast was clear.

"I'm nto feeling well, I gotta go," she told him.

"You should stay if you don't feel well. I can go pick up something for you at the all night pharmacy..."

"I'm _going, _alright?" She asked, irritated and embarrassed; even though he still didn't seem to know what the hell was even bothering her.

"Okay!" He snapped back at her. "What is wrong with you, tonight?" He asked.

"I'll talk to you," she said and grabbed her shoes, before heading out of the door. Sam didn't know whether to chase her and try to ascertain the real issue ot leave her be. He voted on leave her be. Maybe she just wasn't feeling well and would be better tomorrow. He had no idea the kind of week she was about to put him through or why...


	11. Seeing Red with the Scarlet Beast

**Seeing Red with the Scarlet Beast**

It had to be because of the cycle, because Mercedes could not remember everybody being so damned annoying, before. But, hell – she had a regular cycle and with the exception of some bloating, occasional bouts with cramps and mood swings, it really was not an unbearable feature. It sucked, no doubt, but today sucked more than any other recent day.

For one thing, the cramps were horrific today. For another, why the hell was she clotting like crazy and her flow was much heavier than it had ever been in the past. She was only slightly bloated, but also feeling on and off nausea, and her mood was terrible. Ronnie and Strando were working with her and flirting and on any other day, that might have been cute, because Ronnie was a big girl that didn't get the attention that Mercedes believed that she should (she was absolutely adorable and mega cool), and Strando seemed to really be feeling her, lately. But... the damned giggling from BOTH OF THEM!

Mercedes crossed the store to try to work on some inventory and keep herself from telling them to shut the hell up and do some work. She figured that her mid-morning surprise and the chunk it removed from her sleeping time was probably a great factor in the way that she was feeling today. "Here for my paycheck!" She heard Brett cheer. She looked over and saw the short red head, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and there must have been something in the way that she looked, because he halted and appeared worried. "I mean, if Jacob's here, I'll ask him..."

"He's not. I'll get it," she said and handed him her clipboard as she reached onto her belt loop for the keys to the cash office, in which they kept the employee checks. Brett stood outside and waited for her to retrieve his and when she smiled and handed it him; she retrieved her clipboard from him, as well.

"I hate to tell you, but your pants are undone," he said, in a quiet voice.

"I know. I'm fatter than usual today," she said, with her nostrils flared, even though she was still smiling.

"No, no... You're actually the hottest girl that comes into this store. I wasn't trying to suggest anything. I'm gonna go and I'll see you tomorrow, when I come in for my shift," he said and hurried out of her sight. He waved quickly at Strando and Ronnie before dashing out of the front door. Mercedes sighed. Yep, this was gonna be a bad cycle.

Sam strutted up to the table and flopped into a chair across from Puck, next to Finn. They both greeted him with smiles and such and he glanced at his phone to check the time. "Again with that?" Puck asked.

"Again with what?" Finn and Sam both asked at the same time.

Puck laughed and filled Finn in, "Sam's been seeing this really cute, big black chick," he started. Already, Sam was pissed at the story. Finn simply made a face to indicate that he didn't know how to react to Puck's words and of course, Puck didn't notice anything off as he went on, "And apparently she has what they call that good-good, because every time he's away from her, he looks at his phone a billion times, waiting on her to contact him."

"Oh yeah? You're seeing someone, Sam?"Finn asked, somewhat excited as he looked at his friend.

"No," Sam said, against Puck's sideeye. "Well, I mean – we're hanging out and I really like her," Sam explained.

"And he's hitting that," Puck offered.

"Haven't you learned from Quinn chewing you out?" Sam asked him, annoyed.

"Why would Quinn chew him out for that?" Finn wondered.

"Mercedes is really good friends with her," Sam said.

Finn's entire face changed and he cleared his throat and his eyelashes fluttered for a moment, before he finally said, "Mercedes Jones?" Sam and Puck both stared at him and he nodded his head and said, "Well, wow. She's um... she's a great singer." Sam stared at him a moment longer as Puck looked over the menu in front of him. "I remember her from competitions. But, I heard that she went to California and got famous, or something. Is she back in Lima?"

"She's been back for about two years, or three... I can't remember," Sam said. "She went to LA after the summer after graduation and I think that she was in that R&B girls' group for a year and a half. Then, she was a personal assistant to Jeremiah freakin' Stapp, at Marvel Comics for a year and she came home after that. She's the store manager of Completely Nerdgasmic Comics, part time and when summer's over, she'll be back in college for something dealing with music. She takes summers off, but she's still working on college. I'm kinda hoping that she gives the singing thing a try, again,though," he said, not realizing how vividly he was speaking about her.

"You _are _seeing her," Finn said.

"Thank you!" Puck chimed in. Sam blushed and grimaced at them.

Finn asked, "What's wrong with that? She's not that attractive, but she sounds like an alright girl." Puck slid his chair slightly away from Finn, to avoid the swings that he presumed Sam was going to throw at Finn for his remark. Finn glanced at Puck, then looked at Sam to see him seething.

"She IS attractive. She's very attractive. She's gorgeous and she's amazing and has a slew of qualities," Sam said.

"Yeah," Finn said and nodded. "I was getting at that. I guess I misspoke." Sam sighed and rolled his eyes. "I just meant that she's not MY type, but the two of you seem like a good match. So, I'm happy for you. She's always made me kind of nervous, to be honest."

"What do you mean? I didn't even realize that you knew her," Sam said.

"Well, no – not really. But, she is real good friends with Quinn and Santana. Quinn was my first love. Santana was my first... you know. So, I don't know what she knows and it sort of freaked me out. Every time that I would see her at events and stuff, I would shrink away. I heard that she had a terrible attitude and I didn't want to get hit with any of it."

"She has a wonderful attitude!" Sam said. "Anyway... your first time was with Santana? SHE has a terrible attitude."

"Yeah, but that body," Puck said, shaking his head from side to side. Finn nodded in agreement, with a smile. After a brief moment of silence, Puck gasped and said, "Dudes! I just realized that I was responsible for the introductions and set ups that resulted in the loss of both of your virginities. I feel like I'm fricking Hitch, the sex doctor, or something." Both Sam and Finn simply looked at Puck for moment, then both decided that his comment wasn't even worthy of a response and they began to talk about other things, but Sam couldn't seem to stop himself from glancing at his phone.

Mercedes left the comic shop immediately at 6. Sam had sent her a good morning message to check on her, before work and she responded with _**I'll be fine. **_When he asked her why she wasn't fine right now, she didn't get around to answering him, because she had gotten to work (late) and needed to rush to get things up and running. Strando and Ronnie had been waiting outside for her and when she came running to the door to let them in, they both went into the break room and didn't appear again until after she had all of the opening stuff done. She couldn't really be too pissed, because they hadn't clocked in and that additional stuff was her job to do, not theirs, but hell – they could've offered her help, seeing as how she was already struggling.

On her lunch break, she was going to reply to Sam, but she got a call from Jeremiah and she hadn't talked to him in a few months. It ended up being the high point of her day, as Jeremiah asked her if she wanted the shop to be one of the ones invited to appear at some kind of convention that he would be a part of in a few months. He wanted to hang out with her and he really couldn't care one way, or another, the reputation of Jacob's shop. So, she was able to plan a trip to California for October, get Jacob some much appreciated publicity, have the chance to talk to and plan to see her buddy, Jer, AND she put in a good word for Sam and his work and got an invite for him, too. He was going to be so excited! But, after lunch, she realized that she hadn't messaged Sam back and she didn't have time to say much, so she ended up sending him _**I'll be fine**__, _again...

Now, as she checked her phone, she saw that she had a few messages from Sam; but when she opened it, she realized that it was just one message that had simply gone over the one message text limit and rolled over into others: _Are you kidding me right now, Mercedes? I have been worried about you all day – wondering if I did something wrong, wondering if you were alright, wondering why you wouldn't be alright and if I could do something to help and you make me wait all day to repeat that you'll be fine? That does nothing to make me not worry and you could've repeated that hours ago! _She read and re-read it... Some of the words had been replaced, so the message didn't exactly say that. For instance, it said "wonderful" where wondering should have been and "wording" instead of worrying. (Sam kept auto-fix on because of his dyslexia. He thought it helped his messages, but sometimes, it made things worse – or more confusing).

Mercedes was too pissed off to reply, now. She threw her phone into her bag and headed home. Before she got there, it began to buzz and she knew that it was him. She almost decided not to answer, but at the last moment slid her finger across the screen. "Hello?" She answered, sass all in her tone.

"Hey... Did you get my message?" He asked.

"Yeah, I got it," she said. "What's up? You need something?" He scoffed and chuckled. "What's funny?"

"The fact that I just finished defending your attitude today and now you're being all – like this. I don't like it," he admitted.

"I don't like getting scolded in my text messages when I've already had a messed up day, but hey – we were bound to do something that the other didn't like eventually."

"Well, what else did I do, because it's obvious that this isn't about my text message?"

"This IS about your text message, because I was going to call you and give you some really excellent news, but I saw that and you know what? SSince when can't I keep some things to myself? Just because I didn't tell you what's wrong with me today, you get to fuss and complain to me via text?"

"I wasn't... I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to make it sound like that. Of course you can keep things to yourself, but why didn't you just say 'I'd rather not talk about it' and then you took so long to respond. I was just worried."

"I took long to respond because I ran late to work and had to get everything started on my own and I spent my entire lunch hour plus more on the phone with Jeremiah, arranging for us to take a trip to California in October for the store to be a guest at a convention and you to get your damned comics out there!" She didn't even realize that she was crying until she heard Sam saying softly,

"Hey, hey... Don't cry, Mermaid. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump on you. Baby, I promise – I was just worried about you and it felt like you were brushing me off." She sobbed and he offered, "You're amazing, by the way. What you just said that you did. I would be fanboying all over my apartment, but I'm still worried and I'm upset now, because I made you cry."

"You didn't make me cry, Sam. I'm just not feeling good today," she said. "Well, I just made it home, so I'll have to talk to you tomorrow or something," she said.

"Alright. Please, whenever you're ready – tell me what's up?"

"Uh, nothing to talk about, really. Just one of them days. Don't take it personal."

"Okay. I'll miss you," he told her.

"Yeah," she said and ended the call with, "See you soon."

Well, at least she was texting him, but Mercedes had not been around going on four days now, and it was really bothering Sam. Those few precious hours that they would typically have between 6:30 pm to 9:30 (or 3:30 – 9:30 if the Lord loved him that day) were very noticeable. Saturday night, when he met up with the guys at the sports bar, before work, he felt irritable and restless.

"Are you the same guy from Wednesday?" Finn asked.

Artie stared at him, concerned and asked, "Everything good, Sam?"

"Yeah. Everything's fine. I just haven't been sleeping that well the past few days."

Joe told him, "Not being able to sleep is generally an indicator that everything is not fine."

Mike wondered, "Everything okay with you and Cedes?" Sam let out a defeated breath and everyone at the table nodded, knowingly.

"I don't know what I did wrong. She's been distant from me. She hasn't wanted to come over and when I text or call, the interaction has been short. I think... I don't know – I think that she doesn't want to deal with me anymore and just doesn't know how to tell me."

"That don't sound like her," Puck said. "Quinn says that she's one of the most open and honest people that she knows."

"She isn't with me!" Sam fussed. The waitress came to the table to take their drink orders.

"I can ask Tina if she knows anything," Mike offered.

"She and Tina aren't that close," Sam said.

"They're close enough. They met through Quinn, but they're friends now, too – not just a friend of a friend. Of course, Sugar Motta or Santana Lopez would probably have more information on it," Mike said, looking at Artie.

Sam looked at Puck and said, "Or, better yet, Quinn. Did she mention anything?"

"Naw. Quinn wouldn't tell me anything after that whole virginity blast text thing," Puck said.

Artie asked, "I don't understand. Was this change in her just out of the blue, or did something happen?"

"Something happened, I think. She got up one night, and she was freaking out and went to the bathroom, then she got me to get her bag and she changed her clothes and left and hasn't been back to the apartment since," Sam said.

"Did she stain your bed with blood?" Puck asked, making the other guys at the table grimace. "No, no – really. Quinn's done that before, jumping up in the middle of the night and going crazy because she bled all over the place and is embarrassed and disappointed."

Sam shook his head and said, "No, the bed's fine... but she did come back into the room and start looking through the bed like she was trying to find something."

"Oh, well – she's totally on her cycle, Dude," Puck said. "She's not coming around because she doesn't want to have that awkward debate about whether or not it's okay to have sex while she's like that."

Mike frowned and turned up his nose, You have debates like that?"

"Yeah – Quinn's so weird about this. She's at her horniest time ever, but she refuses to get down with me," he said.

Artie shook his head and said, "I'm speechless." Joe simply stared at Puck with a grossed out and horrified expression.

Sam said, "That's not an issue that we would even have. I mean – I am capable of just holding her or even just letting her sleep and not bothering her. I seriously would hope that she doesn't think that I expect her to have sex with me any time that she's with me."

"Do you ever have nights where you don't?" Mike wondered.

"If I come in late from work, and she's asleep. I won't wake her," Sam said with a shrug. "Our relationship is more than just sex!" He snapped.

"Okay," everyone said. Sam was brooding. He sulked for a while, had a couple of drinks and eventually took off. He sent Mercedes a text that he needed to see her before he went to work and asked if he could come over.

Mercedes sighed as she opened the door for Sam. Damn, she hoped that this wouldn't be a long visit. She had been cramping all day and her face had broken out with pimples – one on her cheek, one on her forehead, one on her chin and one right on her damned nose. She had on a pair of reading glasses, her hair was clipped up at the top of her head and she had on a snuggly, baggy pair of pajamas with the planets on them. Sam came in and froze when he saw her. Her nostrils immediately flared and she asked, "Did you come by to stare at me, all rude like?"

"No... I mean – I don't mind. God, you look beautiful," Sam said. She frowned and lifted an eyebrow at him as she shut the door behind him.

"What do you want, Sam?" She asked, annoyed. _Beautiful, my ass! _

"I wanted to see you. I've missed you." He looked at the floor and said, "I guess that you don't miss me too." She sighed, feeling all kinds of guilty and went to flop down on the couch. Sam joined her and stared at her, waiting for her to say whatever it was that she seemed to want to say.

"I missed you, but I haven't felt like being bothered with anybody. I have been coming home, having myself a nice little dessert, catching up on some frivolous entertainment online and going to bed. It's the same chick that I have been for the past couple of years and sometimes, she just has to breathe. I don't feel like having sex and battling with your monkey every night!"

Sam's shoulders slumped. "You _do _think that I expect you to have sex with me every time we're together."

"I mean – it's just a given. That's not even the point, Sam. The point is that I haven't been having a good week."

"Because of your period?" He asked. She felt her face turn hot as her eyes widened and her lip dropped. "I mean, because I'm not gonna try to have a debate on whether or not we have sex while you're like that and it doesn't bother me that you are. I mean, every woman does it, doesn't she? If we ever got married, I'd have to deal with it..."

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GOING ON ABOUT SAM EVANS?" She asked him in a shrieking voice and frightened and silenced him. She shook her head, "This conversation is CRAZY! Yes – alright? Yes, I am on my period and when I'm like this, I simply PREFER to be alone and I live alone. I still pay rent here, so I might as well sleep here, sometimes! And what the hell are you talking about a debate about having sex like this? First off – that's just nasty and the answer would be NO. Second, it wouldn't be any damned debate, because my no meant no, damn it! And third, I am seeing red, right now, so I think you need to leave, before you see my _bad_ side." She got up and grabbed him by the arm. "If we get married? Who the hell is even THINKING about that, right now? All I am trying to be married to is my damned bed, because I am bloated. I have cramps. My face is broke the hell out and I have no more goddamned English toffee!" She practically shoved Sam out of her front door and slammed it shut on him. She leaned against it, fuming and trying to catch her breath. "The hell is he thinking about, coming here with all that?"

"I can go get you some English toffee," she heard Sam say from the other side of the door. She sighed and opened it, looking like an almost totally different woman than the one that he had just accidentally said the wrong thing to. "Just let me know where you get it and what kind," he said, with a crooked smile.

"No, thank you," she said. It just seemed like Sam was always doing something for her, and never the other way around. Aside from getting him an invite to the convention in October, she felt like she was totally falling short in the giver role. "But, sorry about that. I do need to be alone. I really prefer to spend this time to myself."

"Alright. You still seeing red?" He wondered.

"I'm still in a bad way, Sam-Monkey," she said with a pout.

Sam leaned forward and kissed her softly, "I hope that you feel better soon. This only goes on for a week, right?"

"Google it!" She snapped, once again annoyed. Mercedes was not equipped with talking about something like that. It was gross and uncomfortable and awkward. She didn't give a damn if it was natural, or not. So was taking a crap and she wasn't going to have conversations about that, either.

"Alright, sorry. See you!" He said and practically ran away from the door. She shook her head, rolled her eyes and shut the door, with a laugh. She'd have to apologize, kiss up and really make this up to him... but for right now, she really did need to get back into the damned bed and try to sleep through this worst cycle ever that she was having.

Mercedes went to church and sat next to her mother, like she generally did on Sundays. Her dad always sat in a different section (not as close as the ladies. She really didn't feel like being there. She hadn't slept well, at all – mainly because she was feeling bad about how harsh she had been with Sam, then she was torturing herself with thoughts of him hooking up with somebody in the VIP room, then she was tortured by dreams of waking up covered in blood… even though she hadn't had a spill since the first night – she had been so heavy and it had been unnerving to see how heavy.

She socialized briefly after the service, hugged and kissed her parents and made her way home. She checked her phone and saw that Sam had not called her. Yeah – she probably owed him big time. She called him and left a message on his voice mail to call her when he got the chance, but as the day went on and she went to meet Sugar, Brittany and Santana for dinner, she still hadn't heard from him. She figured that earlier, he might have been asleep, because he worked on Saturday nights (and it was their busiest night), but by the time evening came around, she was bothered and moody.

"This moping shit is not gonna cut it," Santana said. "What the hell is wrong with you, Mama?"

Sugar raised her eyebrows and gave Mercedes a knowing look and now, Mercedes wondered what was going through her head. Mercedes shook her head and said, "The Scarlet Beast is running amok." Santana winced and Sugar shook her head. "I have pretty much been being a major bitch to everyone. I've been cramping like hell. I have all the symptoms that you can get and none of the medicine geared for it is helping, and my flow is crazy heavy. I'm clotting and just heavy. It's never been so bad before."

"Maybe it's the sex that's changing your body," Sugar said. "Go see your gynecologist. Sometimes, sexual activity can change the way that your body acts around that time."

Mercedes frowned at her and shook her head, "Sugar... just, stop. If that's your way of asking me if I've had sex, shut up."

Brittany said, "Your shape is changing. Your hips and butt look bigger, wider and I think that your waist is getting smaller. Are you like, regularly doing it or did you start working out or something?"

"If it was anyone else, I would accuse them of being nosy," Mercedes said.

Santana wondered, "What is so wrong about you talking to your friends about your sex life?"

"Because the last time I talked to my friends about something, they broadcast it all over the place and made the guy terribly uncomfortable by picking at him and making comments," she reminded them.

"In case you forgot, we did the same thing with your LACK OF a sex life, too," Santana told her.

"We're bitches," Brittany said, as though it was obvious and Mercedes should expect it all.

Sugar shook her head and said, "I have Aspergers."

"So... Are you two?" Santana asked. Instead of answering her, Mercedes grabbed her phone and answered the incoming call. _Damn good timing, Mr. Evans! _

"Hello?" She answered.

"Hey!" He said. He sounded so happy to be on the phone with her.

"Hey, what's up? Did you get my message?" She wondered.

"Yes, I did. I got it late, though. My phone is having some trouble at my parents' house. I think that a tower's messed up, or something." He told her, "I decided to come to Kentucky for a couple of days, giving you a chance to have your alone time or whatever."

She didn't mean to sound so sad as she said, "Oh. Okay."

"Everything alright?" He asked. She got up from the table and walked a distance away, still not ready for any of the crap from her girls, yet. "Mermaid?" Sam called.

"Yeah, I'm here," she said. "I AM really sorry about everything."

"That's alright. I googled it. I can see why something like that might be strenuous. It seems unfair and unnatural to have to do something like that every month." They talked for a little while longer, then she returned to her table and acted like nothing happened.

Mercedes had an alright day Monday. The visitor was packing up to leave and she could not be more thrilled about it. But her level of joy happened to sky rocket when a delivery guy entered the store and asked Ronnie if she was there. Ronnie pointed to the corner where Mercedes was making a list of what they would want to bring along with them for the trip and she looked up to see the guy bringing over a large fruit bouquet. Ronnie and Gavroche followed him over to her and Mercedes stared at the thing with wide doe eyes.

It was very red – cherries and berries and such. Watermelon carved into heart shapes and a cherry star wreath... She looked at it and asked, "Is that mine?"

"Yup. Somebody loves you, Woman," the guy said and handed it to her. Mercedes saw that the vase it was in had a circular base with several little pockets of melted fruit dips and chocolates. As the delivery guy left, Mercedes placed the fruit on the counter with Gavroche and Ronnie peering over her shoulders as she removed the card.

"Will you two move?" She asked.

"Hell to the no," they answered in unison, imitating her. Then Ronnie suddenly said, "Know what I should totally bring back into rotation? True Jackson's 'You say what now?" Gavroche shushed her and waved his hand as he tried to read the card along with Mercedes. Ronnie covered her own mouth and looked on, as well.

"Seeing red doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'll be waiting for you, Mermaid," The two friends read out loud. Gavroche snatched it and complained, "He didn't sign it!"

Ronnie shook her head and said, "Duh, he doesn't have to sign it. She knows who it's from." Then, she turned to Mercedes and asked, "Who's it from?"

"The sweetest guy alive," Mercedes said, snatched her card from Gavroche and rushed off to hold it against her chest and smile brightly.


	12. Peaches and Cream and Honey

_Them devils on tumblr with their nastiness have sent my mind into a place where there is smut coming from me... Thanks Ash, Erin and Moni! :P _

_Y'all, don't get used to this!_

**Peaches and Cream and Honey**

Sam pulled into his parking lot and got Maurice's cage with one hand and his bag with the other. The monkey was pumped up, having been caged up during the ride, but Stacey and Stevie loved the little guy, so he couldn't come without him. He missed Mercedes, like crazy and when his parents asked him what was on his mind, he brushed it off as some personal things that he didn't want to get into. He hated distance between them. He did understand that she needed her space. It made sense. It was the way that she handled it that had hurt him.

Her friends at work gushed over her fruit arrangement and took photos of it and of her next to it, beaming. One of them posted them on facebook and Sam saw, because the guy tagged her in them. It made him smile to know that he had made her happy. Hopefully that meant that she would want to see him, soon. As he walked up the sidewalk that led to his apartment, he looked over and noticed her car parked in the back parking lot. He tilted his head and decided to go inside and put his stuff down then go check on her. She never came by unannounced, even though she had permission; and she never used his spare key...

Sam reached the door and saw a single peach on a bed of peach and white and gold tissue paper. He reached down to pick it up and underneath was a self photo of Mercedes, in a peach colored, silky looking top and a note that read, "I have a surprise for you!" He couldn't hold back his smile as he quickly unlocked his door and went inside. He set the cage down on the table and tossed his bag on the floor. The entire place smelled like peaches. "Mermaid?" He called.

"Sam-Monkey?" She called back from his kitchen. He turned to see her, in a peach colored silky two piece intimate apparel shorts set and a darker peach open front negligee, falling off of one of her shoulders, revealing her beautiful skin and the thin straps that he saw on the photo. "Welcome back," she said, leaning against his kitchen counter with her back to him and her head looking over her revealed shoulder.

"I should leave more often. What have you got going on, in here?" He asked, looking at her, up and down. The peach laced up sandals with heels caught his attention, but everything about her was so perfect, right now that he couldn't savor any one thing. His eyes were all over her.

"Well, I felt bad for how I treated you and I wanted to say sorry. Plus, I wanted to say thank you, for my gift. And I wanted to say I missed you, because you deserve to know that I did."

He sighed and admitted, as he came closer to her, "I thought that maybe you were going to be breaking things off with me after how this past week went." When he reached her, he wrapped his arms around her midsection and looked at the counter, "What's that?"

"It's a peach pie. That's the smell that's all over the apartment, right now," she said, smiling up at him, loving the way that his eyes were lighting up and his smile was beaming.

"You baked?" He asked.

Mercedes pursed her lips and said, "Now, you know that I don't cook or bake. I ordered it from the bakery!" She cheered. "And..." She went over to the freezer and showed him a container, "I went to the creamery and had them to make some homemade vanilla ice cream. And..." She placed the ice cream on the counter and picked up a can of whipped topping, "There's this." Sam shook his head in pleased disbelief.

"You didn't have to do all that, Mermaid. The creamery? That place is expensive as hell _and _you had a pie baked?"

"I just got it out of the oven from warming it up for you," she said, proudly. He was speechless and her smile started to fade. "Is it too much? I mean – you do sweet stuff and I was just trying to..."

"It's too much," he said, "But, I really, really appreciate it." He was smiling again and he pulled her to him and kissed her gently.

"Well, tonight is all about you, Mr. Evans. I figured that we could have a little dessert, then you could have a bit of my favorite pancakes." She winked at him and he chuckled, remembering that to be the code word for their sexy times (that he coined when she was high off of pills).

"You have wonderful plans, yet again, Miss Jones," he said and beagnt o kiss her neck. Mercedes moaned and melted onto him. Sam pushed her closer to the counter, a little ways from the pie and hoisted her up. The woman let out a squeal and a giggle and he began to slide his hands up her thighs and his tongue down her neck.

"Sam... The desert..."she moaned in a barely audible voice.

"Woman, you said this was my night. You're my favorite dessert." He glanced at the pie and told her, "If it makes you feel better," he stuck a finger into it and rubbed it across her lips before kissing them, making an MMMM sound as he did. He looked into her eyes and asked, "How the hell your lips improve a damned peach pie?" She laughed and shook her head, then stuck her finger into it, as well. She went to trace his lips, but he took her little fingers into his mouth and licked them clean. It brought a smile from him and he dipped into the pie, to scoop out more filling, this time and traced a line from the bottom of her ear down into her top...

Sam was making Mercedes crazy! She was enjoying all of this SO much, but hell – this was supposed to be his night, and yet again, here he was, pleasing her again. He slid her top down to unleash the tops of her bountiful breasts and enjoyed more pie from off of them, then her nipples, then her belly. "Sam!" She hissed. He bit his bottom lip and smiled at her. She slid off of the counter and turned him around to lean against it. She unbuttoned the shirt that he had on and removed it, then pulled his t-shirt over his head. Sam allowed it. He loved letting her do things for him, even though it made him happy just to please her.

She took the top off of the ice cream and used her pinky to get a little bit of it out for his nipples. Sam flinched when the cold treat touched him, then shivered when she removed it slowly, with her tongue teasing him. She kissed a trail down his abs and began to unfasten his belt. He stopped her with his hands and questioned her with his eyes. Mercedes had not gone down on him before and he was unsure if she was ready (she mentioned being curiosu, but she also mentioned being afraid, because of his size). Tonight, she told him, "I won't be able to take it in, but I could do a little something to make you happy," she said, continuing to free his monster from his pants. Mercy took two fingers and scooped out a dollop of ice cream to coat the length of Sam and he moved his legs around all over the place, trying not to take off running or kick a field goal at that weird feeling. She quickly went to lick the length of him, removing every little bit, while he watched her, painfully, trying not to grab her or anything.

Her tongue flapped all around him and he relished the feel of it until he could no longer take her doing this to him and he grabbed her up and threw her on top of the counter again. Her eyes were wide as he quickly pulled her thin shorts aside and shook the whipped cream can. He gave her a little, in her mouth, then kissed her, taking with his tongue to her center. He moaned more than she was at the taste of her and of it and the combination. She wriggled around the counter top, but was not able to get anywhere as he sprayed her down there and attacked it with his tongue, forgetting the can, which hit the kitchen floor with a few clanks and bounced a couple of times before rolling away.

Mercedes reached up and undid a clamp on each strap, which let her blouse fall, and her breasts out and open for her to toy around with while her beautiful partner did his oral business down low. He reached up and tugged on the top, to pull the whole thing down, along with her shorts. When it was just her body in the thin, open robe and those sandals, he collected her from the counter and laid her on the floor. He stretched to reach the can and sprayed her left inner thigh. His tongue made her insane removing it. The ice cream ended up drizzling down her right inner thigh and he highly enjoyed removing that, too. She was bouncing up and down on the hard floor, with her thighs wiggling.

Sam looked at the counter and said, "You got honey, too!"He snatched it down and flipped her over. The robe came flying forward and fell on her bar shoulders. Then, she felt his hand spreading one of her cheeks and the honey begin to slide slowly down her crack.

"Sam!" She called and tried to crawl away.

"Mmm Mmm... my night! And... I'm curious," he said, before dropping the bottle of honey, spreading her open and diving in with his face. Mercedes thought that she might explode or go crazy or something that made no sense, because nothing made sense, at that moment. Nothing should feel the way that this did. She wanted to scramble away, but Sam was insistent on her remaining in his clutches while he took all of the honey he spilled away, chuckling sporadically at her reactions and the sounds that she was making. He had never heard her make such sounds and her high notes were at a peak. _She enjoys it – Good to know. _

"This is not natural!" She squealed and began to slap the kitchen floor with her hand, repeatedly. The damned pleasure and the torture of this was inconceivable.

"Are you tapping out?" He asked, amused.

"You have to stop! I can't take it!" She cried out. He laughed and kneeled down to put his tongue back into her moisture. The backside thing had her so wet that she pretty much just dripped on his tongue when it connected with her. He'd let go of her, so she fell over and toppled to the floor, with both of her arms stretched out next to her. Sam continued eating her as he multitasked, putting on a condom from his wallet. When he had it on, he sat up and pulled her body to him, sliding in her slickness from behind.

Mercedes arched her back and he watched himself going in and out of her, her brown buttocks shaking in those waves that he adored whenever she shook it. He grunted and took her hips into his large hands to work even harder. She was practically screaming already. He leaned and collected her to himself as he pounded, "Baby? I... I wanna cum on you. Is that alright?"

"Oh – you can – oh... do whatever you want to me. My body belongs to you, Sammy," she moaned. He shuddered with pride and pleasure at her saying that to him and fought off the urge to let loose, right then. She had to make it, first. She had been close, but he needed to make her reach that point. (Sometimes, she couldn't and while it was supposedly natural, it always made him feel inadequate when he couldn't get her there. Always.) He backed up and pulled her on top of him to thrust upward into her from behind. Immediately, she began howling and reached back behind her to grab onto him. Sam arched her back for her and slammed into her like a maniac, grateful for his curve these days, since research told him that it could hit spots that the typical penis couldn't and in this position, Mercedes had this special spot that made her literally howl at the moon. He smiled, watching his precious lady with her head thrown back on his shoulder, unable to stop herself from making all of those calls of the wild as she came closer and closer... He reached around to find her clit. "Come for me, Beautiful. Do it for me, Gorgeous. You are so sexy. You are the finest, the hottest and need you to give it up to me, Baby. God, I love everything about you."

Mercedes let out a loud cry as she gave him what he wanted, her juices flowing out of her, over the condom and mmm... he could feel it dribbling down his sack. She had never cum that hard or that much before and she appeared to be doing it again as he pulled out of her and remover his condom, not wanting to miss his chance. She was gracious enough to reach behind her and help with rubbing it out and he gladly accepted that feeling from her hands that made his own hands feel so worthless on his own body, now. When she milked him out, he groaned as he watched the lovely explosion all over her flawless round booty. It was marvelous and he rubbed his hand over the surface of it, working it gently onto her skin. They collapsed on the floor in each other's arms and he positioned himself beneath her.

"You are incredible," he told her. "That was the best it's ever been." She smiled against his chest and commented, "I got onto your case about scratching your balls in the kitchen... there's no excuse for what just happened. I have semen on my booty, whipped cream on my coochie, peach pie on my titties, ice cream on my thighs and honey in my crack. I'm a hot and sticky damned mess."

He laughed and kissed her on the nose. "_My_ hot and sticky damned mess."

"So, um... I didn't plan on getting my butthole licked."

"And crack," he said.

"And crack," he amended. "That was shocking."

"Yeah, but you kinda loved it," he told her.

"I only let you do that because I'd just washed up. Otherwise, imagine how terrible that would be!"

"Naw – it'd still be good. I mean, it's you. Anyway, I knew that you had washed up you smell like your soap... well, you did when we first started. Now, you smell like a hot and sticky damned mess," he teased.

"_Your _hot and sticky damned mess!" She snapped.

"Damned straight. You should've never told me that you belong to me. I'm holding you to that," he told her. "In other news, that's a damned good peach pie. Where'd you get it from?"

"That bakery on the corner near the Lima Bean," she said.

"That really expensive place? Mermaid!" He sat up and looked at her, "How much money did you spend on all of this?"

"What kind of...? You aren't supposed to ask people that! Don't worry about it. I did it and you are worth it and it was worth it." She stroked his sweaty hair and tousled it, making a slight shower on herself from it. He smirked and pulled her close to himself again.

"Thank you."

"No need to thank me. I think that you got cheated there. I was the one getting all the pleasure."

"Incorrect, Miss Jones. I love giving you pleasure and it turns me on just to see you want me that much."

"I am eventually going to give you a blow job. You know that, right?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm satisfied with whatever you do give me, Peaches."

She laughed and told him, "Yeah, but I want to give you everything. I want to give it all to you."

Sam made moaning sound and looked down at himself, "You see what you did there? How about we head to the bedroom, now?"

"Not the shower?" She asked.

"I'm just gonna mess you right back up, if you want to know the truth," he said as he got up and reached out to help her. Mercedes legs felt like noodles as she went to the bedroom and she took off her shoes and the robe that was covered in all kinds of sticky. Sam came into the room, holding all of the dessert stuff in his arms and she stared at him. "Oh, you didn't realize that I was gonna mess you back up with the same stuff! Yeah... This stuff is expensive and I can't share with anybody else now, with all of our sex germs in it."

After they made love again, Mercedes moved to collect his cum into her lips. He wasn't expecting it and she knew that he would be pleased with that choice. With her terrible gag reflex, she wasn't ready to try to tough out learning the other thing, but she worked him until he was pouring down her throat and she swallowed, making an odd face. Sam was shuddering, but he passed her the honey, which she ate a little of. "It was thick, going down and kinda caught in my throat a bit. But, I can get used to it. I'll get used to it, for you."

"You don't have to, Mercedes."

"I want to make you happy, Sam."

"You don't have to suck my cock or swallow mu cum to make me happy. I mena – yeah – that's awesome and I'll love it. But, you could make me happy by just saying yes to officially being my woman." Now, Mercedes sighed. Sam rolled his eyes and turned to lie flat on his back. She would never say yes. What the hell did it take to convince her? "Your answer is still no."

"It's not no. It's never been no. It's more of a not now. I'm still not ready, Sam. I'm already scared that I'll mess things up and I can't handle that extra stress of knowing that I'm obligated. We do everything now that boyfriends and girlfriends do."

"Yeah, except I don't get to brag on how you're mine. I don't get to show you off to my friends and my family. But, I mean – If you aren't ready, I can't force you. I'll just have to wait to see if that ever happens."

"Sam, the way that things are between us, I'm sure that it will. Please, continue to be patient with me, if you can?" She asked, snuggling into his side.

"I'd wait forever for you, Mermaid," he promised and held her tightly. "And, you'll have to tell me all about that invitation thing from Jeremiah Stapp."

She laughed and said, "Actually, there's not much to tell. Jeremiah called and he was telling me that he really missed me..." She was going on, but Sam sort of flinched at that statement. _He really missed her? What the hell did that mean? _"And he wanted me to come to see him in California. Well, OF COURSE, I can't just be going to California. I only work full time hours in the Summer, and when Summer's over, I work part time and have school and I can't afford vacations to Cali, anyway. So, he tells me about this convention in October and that he can invite comic book stores and vendors and artists, etc to it. So, since he wanted to see me and I couldn't just make the trip, he invited the store to the convention and I threw it out there that I had a friend who was an artist who had amazing work that he features at the shop and that I wanted to include you and he was all over it, because I gave you a stamp of approval!"

Sam was quiet for a while, then said, "That's awesome. But, so... he invited the whole store and me because he missed you?" He asked.

"Yeah," she giggled. "He does stuff like that. He's young and has more money than he knows what to do with, so most of the time, he invites friends and stuff to these conventions. But, the stores that get invited get a ton of publicity and the artists are sometimes discovered."

"And you told him that you had a _friend _that was an artist?" Sam said.

"Yes!" She said, cheerily. "So, make sure you prepare some of your best stuff because you might get discovered."

"Did he ask if you were seeing anyone?" Sam wondered.

"No!" She laughed, "He never asks me anything about that. I'm never seeing anyone and I think he pretty much expects that."

"Yeah, but only, right now – you kinda are seeing someone," Sam reminded her.

"Yeah, and I'm kinda sure that has nothing to do with him and he could care less... But, now that you mention that, I'll have to be sure to keep an eye on him around _you." _She laughed and added, "I mean, you're already a fanboy for him. It'd be embarrassing as hell if he snatched you right out of my hold. But, you keep that between us. It isn't public knowledge, although I seem to remember a bit of speculation."

"Wait... Jeremiah Stapp is gay?" Sam asked. "Once again, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For getting all bent out of shape about Jeremiah missing you and wanting to see you," he said.

"I... I didn't realize that you had gotten bent out of shape."

"I had."

"Well, you don't have anything to worry about, Sam. The way that you put it on me, I couldn't even imagine thinking about anybody else," she told him.

Sam smirked and looked down and said, "Welp, look at what you did there... again."

"Mmm hmm. You sure that I did that and not the mentioning of Jeremiah and Marvel Comics."

"Relatively sure," he told her. "But it's a good combo."

"Lay back. It's my turn to be on top... and after this – we need to shower!"

"Alright, alright. After that, can we curl up on the couch and watch movies?"

"This is your night. Anything you want," she told him and leaned down to kiss him before they got started up again.


	13. Life in the Friend Zone

_There's a lot of facebook dialogue in the chapter. I hope it isn't too much..._

**Life in the Friend Zone**

"Table full of milfs requested White Chocolate for the VIP room," Dustin said, right before the owner of the place approached and said exactly the same thing to Sam. He sighed and Dustin lifted an eyebrow, "You don't seem to enjoy this as much as you used to. I guess it has something to do with that woman that has you glowing all the time?"

"Yeah, I guess," Sam replied. "I feel like I spend more time in the VIP room than anywhere else in the building," Sam complained.

Dustin retorted, "You went from being one of the least paid dancers here to being the second highest, because of that VIP room. Embrace it, Kid. I mean, they loved you before and everything, but you have to admit that since you began to know what it's actually like to work it in a woman that you've gotten better at the job."

"I've been dancing for years!" Sam said.

"Yeah, and it was hot to them that you seemed so nerdy and inexperienced. It made you a good fantasy, but you know, the big bucks lie in that area where they know that you know exactly what to do with what you have. They want it and in this business, you can't beat that."

Sam sighed and got ready for the VIP room. He really wanted to quit his job, or to move on to something else. It was simply comfortable. He had been stripping since he turned 18 and now, at 21, he was so used to it that it was like second nature. But, Captain Handsome was absolutely right... Since Sam began sleeping with Mercedes, it was like his sexy increased tenfold. Had he not been so crazy about her, he might love it. But, his emotions made his job harder. He had to try to balance out the fact that he promised not to do some of the illegal things that he would do for a bit of extra cash with the fcat that he was now sexier... and he still didn't understand how that worked.

Sure, he felt different. He was happier and more confident and to be honest, probably in a bit better shape, because truth be told, he and Mermaid did it pretty much every night. But, he was the same person. He looked the same, but everyone seemed to see him differently and the patrons noticed enough for him to become a pretty damned hot commodity around those parts. He couldn't complain. Dustin was right – it meant more money in his pocket. But, it also meant more chances to be in awkward situations where he had to reject somebody and possibly lose business.

The store was too busy for Mercedes to actually have a chance to talk to Sam, while he was at his table, selling comics. She and Ronnie were working the registers and the guys were on the floor. Sam watched her smiling with (and seemingly flirting with) some of the customers. He frowned, but kept his silence and his distance. He wasn't her boyfriend, and even though they had a habit of calling each other "mine," he knew that she wouldn't appreciate it too much, if he went into possessive mode... But he also knew what these comic boys thought of her, especially these days.

That 'after sex' change thing worked both ways. And while Sam was delighted that his friend seemed to be more confident and he loved the fact that she was always glowing and he knew it was because of him, he didn't too much care for having to see all of the guys that fawned over her at the shop, during his weekly visits.

Sam stared ultra hard at this guy who was making Mercedes laugh at the counter and sighed frustrated. He knew him, from school. His name was Ryder and he was an okay guy, Sam guessed, but he couldn't be less impressed by the fact that Mercedes was laughing herself to the point of tears and holding her midsection. She reached out and gave the guy a swat on the arm, then rubbed the spot, subconsciously. Naw, Sam didn't like all of that. That was flirting territory. He checked his watch and tried not to look too moody as he continued to sit at the table and watch the guy.

After what seemed like an inconceivable amount of time, the guy pulled out his phone, talking and pressing buttons and Mercedes looked over his shoulder, speaking with him. A couple of customers approached the table, so Sam quickly became cheery and started talking to them. As Ryder left the store, he threw Sam a quick wave and Sam nodded once at him, not meaning to come across as dismissive as he knew that he probably did. At the end of the day, he packed away his table as the store crew began to do their closing stuff.

He threw his bag over his shoulder and went to put the table back into the storage room. He gathered up his box of leftover comics and went to the counter, where Mercedes was counting the money. "Hey – you coming over tonight?" He wondered, standing as close to her as possible, making sure to get within her personal space, having wanted to be territorial all day.

"You have to work tonight, don't you?" She asked.

"Well, yeah – but that's hours from now," He reminded her.

"Oh, well... you'be been here most of the day. I thought that you would want to get some rest before work, so I made plans to do something with a friend," she said, nodding her head and shrugging her shoulders.

"Santana, or...?" He started.

"Um, Ryder? You should know him. I think you two graduated together," She said, pushing buttons on the adding machine and stuffing the money into a cash bag.

"I didn't even realize that you and that guy were friends," Sam said, swallowing down his jealousy, or at least trying to.

"Yeah, he's more like a friend of a friend. Sugar introduced us a while back, during one of those things where I'm not allowed to come stag, so she assigned me a date." Now, Sam's face went pale and he couldn't do anything but bit his lip to keep silent and roll his eyes. Mercedes quickly told him, "But, it wasn't anything like what happened between us." She pointed back and forth between them. "It was more like, neither one of us were each other's type, but we both found each other pretty cool and he works at one of the music stores and lets me get his discount."

"Yeah – totally not into you, with that," Sam mumbled. Mercedes' eyebrow jetted upward, and he sighed and asked, "What are the two of you doing tonight?"

"Going to go see a movie and gave some coffee," she said. "I'm sure I'll be done before you get up to go to work, if you want me to sleep over and be there when you get home." She lowered her voice when she discussed meeting up with him and that bothered him. All of it bothered him. "I'm off tomorrow, so we might be able to do something."

"Do something, or stay in and hide the fact that we even know each other?" He asked. When she gave him a confused frown, he elaborated, "This dude is taking you to the movies and out for coffee. We never do stuff like that, and I'm fucking you," he hissed a little too loudly and only noticed when he heard Gavroche and Ronnie snicker, before rushing away. "I didn't mean to say that so loud," Sam said, quickly. "And I didn't mean it like that," he tried to fix, seeing the hurt and shame on her face.

"Have you ever asked me to a movie, before?" Mercedes asked. "It's not like you've wanted to do stuff with me and I've shot you down. We go places. We do like all of our shopping together. We do all of our browsing together. If you wanted to go do something, all you had to do was ask. I'm not one for nights out, so it wouldn't be my suggestion. But, don't explode on me because somebody asked me for a casual night out and I said yes!" Her nostrils were flared and her teeth were bared, but he knew that she was more hurt than angry. "And I didn't know that we were _fucking. _I just assumed that it was more than that..."

"It is. I didn't mean it like that, Mermaid," he said and wrapped his arm around her waist. "I was watching him with you and I guess I started to misguide myself and listen to all the wrong thoughts. I'm the one that turned this into an issue. I am so jealous. I don't know why, because I know that you don't sleep around, but... It's more like I'm worried that you'll better deal me."

"Better deal you?" She repeated.

"Yeah. On one hand, you've got an, I guess, attractive guy, in pretty good health, who's pretty nice and very creative. He's and awesome dude who's great at impressions and crazy about you, but he's also a stripper and a not yet there _dyslexic _comic book artist. He sort of sells his body for other's entertainment and even though he's good at what he does, he's not very proud of it, and he knows that you have a problem with it, too." She raised an eyebrow. She was _curious _about it, but the main problem that she had with it was that _he _had a problem with it. She hated that he was doing something that he hated doing.

Sam kept going, "Then there's this dude. I think he got a football scholarship and he's actually working on a real career. The girls always said he was hot, and he was obviously interested in you..."

"Are you almost done, Sam? I have to finish counting the money, and you're disrupting me with outlandishness. I don't give a damn who he's supposed to be, or what he has. You're the best deal in town, Sam. I'd be an idiot to try to trade you for anybody." She leaned up and kissed him, quickly. It barely lasted any time at all, but she heard Jacob clear his throat and the two of them looked over. She quickly removed Sam's hand from her waist and commented, "The store's closed and all of the customers are gone."

Jacob said, "And yet, I would appreciate it if you remained professional, while you're on the clock and Sam, you should have been gone before the doors were locked."

"On my way out," Sam said and rolled his eyes. He pointed at Mercedes and said, "Call me, after your date night."

She pointed back at him and said, "It's not a date."

Sam and Maurice decided to play video games. Well, Sam decided to play videogames while Maurice decided to press a few buttons, then throw the controller at Sam's head. Sam playfully kicked his little buddy off of the table and laughed as the monkey scrambled around before standing up straight and giving him the most "go to hellish" look that he had ever seen him give. "Don't be throwing stuff, Joker," Sam reminded his pet, then summoned him to his lap. Maurice came over and settled on his dad, then turned and began to mess with his chest. "What you doin,' Gangster of love?" Sam asked, swatting him away. Maurice swatted also at Sam's hands and checked his shirt again; then, left.

"Oh, I get it. If I don't have an awesome rack, you don't have time for me. I see you, pompetus of love. You like Mercy's peaches and wanna shake her tree. Them's my peaches, Maurice. That's Sam Monkey's pot o' gold, and none for Maurice!" He chuckled to himself, resuming his game, "And none for no Ryder Lynn, either," he mumbled and glanced at his phone. She hadn't called yet, but the night was still young.

Around nine pm, he heard a knock on his door and he went to it, having just gotten up from his short nap, before work and saw her through the peephole. He smiled and opened the door. "Hey! Maurice missed you."

"Freaky lil' monkey missed my boobs, is what you meant," she said.

"Exactly. That's all you're good for to him. You never should've brought those things in here," Sam told her.

"I probably shouldn't bring them anywhere," she said and sighed. "It was a date, Sam." She pinched the bridge of her nose and said, "I feel really ridiculous, right now, because I didn't know it was a date until that fool tried to kiss me goodnight. Like I would've kissed him if it _had _been a date!"

"I knew it! I knew he wanted you! What'd you tell him?" He asked.

"I panicked and told him that I had a boyfriend. Then, when he asked me why I went out with him, I told him that I didn't know it was a date. Then, he started asking me about my boyfriend, and after I started getting tripped up with some of my answers, I went into sassy mode on him and told him that my personal business was none of his. Then, he laughed and told me that I didn't have a boyfriend and told me that if I didn't like him, I could've just said that. Then, he got on facebook and told people that I'm a lying liar who lies."

"Seriously? He's like 20 years old," Sam said. He folded his arms and laughed at her. "Next time, you'll know. If a guy wants to hang out with you – he probably wants you, Mermaid. You're hot, sweet, and fun. We hardly ever actually want to just hang out with a woman that we don't wanna really get next to, unless she's like a sister or like an in-law, or something. Like – I can solo hang with Quinn all the time, or Tina, because they're friends from way back and they date my best bros."

"But... I used the word "friend" repeatedly when talking to him," Mercedes said, kicking off her shoes and sitting on the couch.

Sam shrugged and sat next to her, "You use the same word for me," he told her, "And I'm _pretty _sure that we're a little bit beyond the friend zone."

"I consider us friends," she said, "Sure – you're the closest friend that I've ever had... for reasons. I've never explored the things that we've explored together with anybody else, but at the end of the day – we aren't planning any futures together or outlining any commitments. So... we're friends."He sighed and tried not to roll his eyes as he rested his head on her lap and she began to strum his hair.

"Alright," he told her. "So, you owe me a date, then. If you went on a date with a random friend; your closest friend wants one, too."

"What you wanna do, Sir?" She asked.

"Seriously? I wanna go hunting," he said. She paused from stroking his hair and his eyes shot open. "I'll teach you everything. It is a very good buddy bonding experience."

"How about we do something more traditional, and by traditional, I mean, for me. Like, how about dinner and a movie?"

"Can we go stargazing, afterwards?" He asked.

"Yes, that sounds good," she said.

Sam sat up and said, "You've got yourself a date, Gorgeous."

She washed up for the night while he got ready for work, then curled up on his couch, to catch up on some online reading while he was out. She had coffee that night, so, she would probably still be awake, when he got home. It was a good night to be online. Many of her friends seemed pumped up and since she was online, and not with her nosy face-to-face friends, she was able to brag on Sam, like a lot. It was fun to get some of the stuff out of her system that she might get teased about if she were to do so with her real life homies.

After a while, she went to see if Ryder's trifling ass had said anything else about her and saw that she had been tagged in some photos and there were comments. She began to click on stuff. Sam had tagged her in some random photos, like – ones he had taken of her around his or her apartment, in each of their vehicles, at the comic book store, the music store, and the book store – the places that they generally went shopping together. He'd had an album called 'Mermaid,' for most of the time that they had been hanging out, but to her knowledge, this was the first time he had ever tagged any of the pictures.

Several of her friends liked her pictures, but she also got several comments, such as "I didn't realize that you and Trouty Mouth were hanging out so much."- Santana

"Is it my imagination, or are you glowing in EVERY photo that Sam has of you?" – Tina

"Your smile is literally better than everyone else's. You look really happy in all of these."- Quinn

"Wait... your status says 'Single' and Sam's says 'It's Complicated,' but he's tagging all of these photos like there should be status changes. Am I missing something?" – Sugar

"They fuckin." – Santana

"Santana! Lol. You are horrible!" – Sugar

"Either they are, or he's the most sprung friend zone prisoner in Lima."- Santana

"No, no – according to her, she has a boyfriend, but hey – she is a liar, after all." – Ryder

"Oh, hell no! Who are you calling a liar? Sugar and I are the only bitches bad enough to call our girl a liar. You need to move around, with all of that bull." – Santana

"If she's a liar, unfriend her and be on your way! :( " – Sugar

"Salty ass." – Santana

"Whiny ass." – Sugar

"Musty ass... somebody obviously told you wrong. My girl's page is not the place to try to disrespect or call her out." – Santana

Mercedes couldn't do anything but laugh, but she was wondering why the hell Sam would go there, tagging her in photos, like that? She clicked on his page and saw that his last update had been around the time that he left for work and it was, "My best friend and I are gonna go on a date and I'm super stoked about it. And now, I'm gonna tag a bunch of my pictures of her to embarrass the hell out of her tonight."

She laughed, again and mumbled, "He is crazy."

On that update alone, she saw several likes and some comments. "A date like date? Like, not staying in watching movies and stuff?" – Mike

"Yup. A legit date. She went out with some dude earlier, but he was a douche, or something." – Sam

"She is going to kill you for posting stuff about her on your wall." –Quinn

"Killing me softly..." – Sam

"Why aren't you at work?" – Quinn

"I am. I just can't really give much of a damn about work tonight."- Sam

Mercedes decided to finally interject and left a comment on the wall, "I hope you know that you began wall wars on my page!"

A few minutes later, Sam commented, "Lol! I saw. Was about to step in myself when that dude came at you, but your girls had your back. I was impressed at their quick response time."

"I am not impressed about these tagged photos," she told him.

"Shush. You look great in them!" He replied.

"I'm gonna text you," she said.

"They fuckin." Santana reiterated.

"When did YOU get on Sam's friend list?"Mercedes wondered.

Santana replied, "Around the time that I tore into that RYDE_ALL_DAY dude's ass. Your grouper mouth friend sent me a request."

"Which I am regretting already." – Sam

"Don't get mad. I ain't gonna tell anybody else y'all fuckin." – Santana. Mercedes laughed when Santana's comments disappeared from Sam's page.

"Did you just unfriend her?" Mike wondered.

"I regret nothing!"- Sam.

Mercedes heard her phone going off and she saw a text from Santana, _**That bastard deleted me. Now, I know that y'all are fucking.**_

_**He just doesn't like that kind of talk, **_Mercedes texted her friend back.

_**So... you two are NOT? **_Santana wondered.

_**We're having a little summer fling, it seems. **_Mercedes admitted for the first time in damned near two months that there was anything besides friendship between herself and Sam. _**We spend a lot of time together, but nothing defined and we definitely ARE NOT fucking. **_She rationalized that at least the last part was true... What she and Sam did defied the timeless, simple tradition of "fucking."

_**He wants it. I know that much. Getting that damned excited about a real date... You gonna let him hit it? Technically, it won't be like the FIRST date, if you two already spend a lot of time together.**_

_**You already know that I am not EVEN about to get into this kind of discussion with you! **_ Mercedes commented, laughing to herself, as she texted and heard her phone buzzing with an incoming text. _**And, I have to go. It's getting late. We'll have lunch soon, or something.**_

_**Night, Chica. PS – I know you're fuckin.' Unlike you, Sam talks to his friends. Sugar told me that shit when it first started. He's talked to his boys about the shit. Deny it all you wanna!**_

_**Ugh – go your messy ass to bed! **_Mercedes finally texted back and checked her text from Sam.

_**Hey... thought you were gonna text me. We're slow and I'm bored. Probably gonna leave early. What are you doing, besides shaking your head at your silly ass friends? **_

Mercedes thought for a long time, before finally responding. She could always pretend that she had been online and missed the text. She sighed and typed up a message, then took an even longer time before sending it. _**Speaking of friends... have you told yours about us? Because I was under the impression that we were keeping things to ourselves...**_

Sam never replied to her text, and it made her unable to sleep, even if she hadn't been still alert from her caffeine earlier. When he unlocked the door, she set her laptop aside, having been up, social networking all night and she met him at the door, with a worried look. He startled when he saw her. "Hey. I couldn't text you back, because I ended up getting an invite to the VIP room. It was kind of steady after that, so the phone had to go into my locker."

"I understand. I never can text at work," she said. She was still waiting on his answer. He nodded and gave her a soft smile. She tried to force a smile back, but her eyebrows were furrowed and he could tell that she knew the answer to her question, and that she didn't like it.

"To answer your question, from earlier, um... yes – I've spoken with my friends about us, but not in a braggy way, or anything. It's just been mostly stuff like, well – when you were behaving weird, it first came out, that we've been you know, seeing each other, alone. Since then, it's not commonly talked about, and it's never like the center of a conversation or anything. For example, the guys called one night and wanted to go have drinks. It was late and I told them that you were over and I couldn't. That's happened a few times. They know that we're officially friends, but they also know that I care about you more than that and that you sleep over."

She sighed and said, "One of the main reasons that I never talk to my friends about us is because YOU had such a bad time of knowing that we'd talked about it, before!"

"That was different. I'm not talking to my friends about your parts. It's just kind of inevitable that they know at this point, and my friends are different than yours, anyway. Like – my friends haven't said anything, since Puck's idiotic text, when we first did it. But, your friends, post blasts on facebook walls."

"So... it's only being kept between us and your friends?" She said.

"It's... you're friends are busybodies. Look at how they were on your page!" He defended himself.

"Well, Artie told Sugar around the time that we first hooked up!" She fussed.

"He was basing that on Puck's text, not anything that I said, because I never confirmed that for them. Even if I had never mentioned it, the guys stopped by, drunk the other week, and we still had peaches and stuff all over the kitchen floor and panties and clothes. They would've known that we're involved, from that alone."

"I forgave you for not having cleaned up the kitchen by the time they got here that night, but damn – do you know how hard it is to try to keep up this privacy stuff with my friends, only to find out that you haven't been doing the same?" Her voice was louder than she expected.

"Can we not argue again, please? I just wanna wash the club off of me and lay down," he said. "I'm exhausted and I don't even think that I could think straight, if I tried."

"Fine. We'll talk later," she said and stormed to the couch. Sam rolled his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh as he went to go wash up, upset that she was handling things the way that she was. Every instance that he had ever discussed their sex life had been innocent and harmless.

Sam came out and looked in at Mercedes, still on the couch. "Hey – come to bed," he said, gently. She sighed and got up, to make her way to the room. "I don't want you to go to bed mad at me," he admitted and came up from behind her to wrap his arms around her. "I just want you to be happy with me, all of the time and I was worried that if your friends knew and they began to bother you, you wouldn't be."

"I know. I just thought that it went both ways. Whenever it sort of came up around us, I told them that it wasn't any of their business or I deflected. There are times that I want to gush with my girlfriends over you!" She had her lip poked out and he leaned in to suck on it. She giggled and pulled back. "You make me sick! I can't stay mad at you!"

"Good!" He cheered and began to march her to the bedroom. "Because, I am sleepy as hell and I was never gonna go if you stayed mad at me."

"I wanna go on our date tomorrow, and I wanna gush with my girls about it," she said.

"You can do whatever you want. I thought that you wanted to keep things secret, but at this point – I kind of would love for everybody to know what's up." He was actually hoping that with things out in the open, she might not be so reluctant to make them official. It shouldn't matter, because she was his, in every sense of the word, except for title. But, somewhere inside of him, it _did _matter. He wanted to bring her home to his folks and go on doubles and triples with Mike and Tina and/or Puck and Quinn.

He wanted to have the right to step up when dudes were hitting on her and throw his arm around her and kiss her, then give old dude the single head nod, and a quick "Whaddup?" He just wanted her to be his, really his. Hopefully soon...


	14. First Date

**First Date**

Well, if this wasn't some awkward stuff... It probably shouldn't have felt that way, but it did. How do you go about having a "first date" with somebody that you've been playing house with for the past two months?

She thought about that night that his friends stopped by. Of all the damned times to stop by, they do so on the night where there are panties and peach syrup on the kitchen floor. There had been a practice in place in which if the guys were too drunk, they could crash at Sam's.

One of their favorite bars was a couple of blocks away from his apartment, but even if they were elsewhere, they could get a cab to Sam's and crash there, as opposed of waking their ladies up in the middle of the night. Sam had a spare key – everyone knew about it. But, it had been the only time since she had been sleeping there that the guys did so, so she was unprepared. Yet, it was not as embarrassing as she would have thought, because she was able to get into the bedroom, quickly, while they made so much noise getting into the apartment and they were all so drunk!

Now, she knew that they knew and her friends had an idea, and she was going to go on a real date with Sam and it simply seemed a bit overwhelming. Especially because her girls had to take her on their ritualistic predate panty shopping trip. Sugar was the worse person to go panty shopping with, because "you have to get" everything that she saw. "Oh, Mercedes! You have to get these!" She said and picked up a sultry pair of red, crotch less panties and a half cup bra. "If you guys are not a couple by the time he sees this, then there is no reasoning with him. Then, I mean, what is his life?"

"I don't think that those are really me and wouldn't it be uncomfortable to wear those beneath my clothes all night? I vote on some simple, plain undies, a bra and a nice bottle of perfume, maybe some matching lotion." Mercedes picked up a bottle, removed the top and took a sniff. She winced and replaced it, "Not that one, though." Her eyes widened when she saw a purple, glittery bottle and she rushed to pick it up.

"Is there a theme to this date? I mean – are you two going to one of those nerd festivals where you dress up and meet a bunch of other nerds or anything?" Santana asked, holding a set in one hand and pressing another set up against Mercedes' body. "Because if it's like that; you could probably get away with hero underoos."

Sugar cheered, "Underoos for the win!"

Mercedes nodded and said, "I could definitely rock underoos."

"I was being facetious," Santana said and placed one of the sets back on the rack. "We all know that they don't make underoos to accommodate your assets, Wheezy." She patted Mercedes twice on the back and handed her a plain white bra and panty set. "Plain Jane, just the way you like it."

"Actually, I think I like the gold one," Mercedes said, pointing to the same set in color.

"I think that's champagne," Tina commented. Whatever color it was, Mercedes switched it out for the white one and threw it into her handheld basket, which she'd just noticed had all kinds of other stuff inside of it, as well. She sighed as she heard Sugar gasp at something.

"Oh! Cede, you HAVE to get this!" The woman cheered, throwing a dazzling green one piece into the basket. It had a sheer covering over the breast area and open crotch... What the hell was it with Sugar and open crotches?

"Sugar, I still have drawers full of lingerie that you've forced me to get that I have never had the chance to wear!" Mercedes complained.

"Not my fault or problem. Besides, I paid for them all," Sugar said. "And today's little trip is on me, by the way."

"My favorite part of pre-date panty shopping," Tina said, with a broad smile. Sugar smiled at her and handed her something.

"This – just perfect for you and Mike. Perfect," Sugar said.

Tina smiled and nodded at the risqué outfit, "It sure is."

When they got to the counter, Sugar announced to the clerk. "One ticket, separate bags, please?"

"Of course, Miss Motta," the girl behind the counter said, with a bright smile. Then she smiled at Mercedes and asked, "Oh – did he like that peach one that we picked out?" Mercedes felt her entire face go hot as her friends turned to face her.

"The peach what?" Sugar wondered. "MerMAID! Have you been panty shopping without me?" She teased. "And whoever could you be doing that for?" Mercedes sighed and set her basket on the counter.

"He loved it, thank you," she said shyly and softly.

So, she went with jeans instead of leggings – gold stretch jeans with sporadic rips and an off of the shoulder red blouse with sparkling gold stars on it. She stared at the mirror, wondering if she went too far with the make up? She didn't have on a lot, but she didn't really wear makeup these days. However – this _was _a date. "Ugh!" She groaned and cleaned off her face to just apply some mascara and lip gloss. She let her hair fall into loose curls over her shoulders, then wondered if she needed to put it up, or something. "You are putting entirely too much thought into this!" She fussed at herself, then heard a knock on her door. "The hell?" She asked and wiped her hands on a towel before going to answer it.

Mercedes peeked out of the peep hole and saw Sam, looking pretty much like Sam – nothing special or different about him. She _had _put too much thought into it. She smiled and opened the door for him. "Hey!" He cheered when she did and he paused and looked down at her. "Whoa. You look _really _pretty this evening."

"You look good too," she said, moving aside for him to enter.

"I look the same way that I always do," he said.

"Exactly," she agreed.

"You flirtin' with me, Miss Jones? I know that you aren't gonna try to get fresh with me on the first date! You're a lady. Might have to take these back where they came from," he said, pulling a bouquet from behind his back. She gasped and placed her hands over her mouth. "Realized that I never got you flowers before. I think that maybe I was waiting on us to go on an actual date. I had no idea how hard it is to pick out the flowers." When she made a confused face, he explained, "Flowers have meaning and stuff and the girl at the shop was all like 'Do you just want a pretty bouquet, or is your lady special enough for you to want her bouquet to tell her something?'"

She laughed as she reached out for the flowers and noticed it was in a purple and black marbled vase. "And you got them in a vase!"

"Yeah – I didn't know if you already had one or not, and if I'm gonna be taking you on dates, I'm probably gonna be bringing you more flowers. I wanna be able to tell a whole story. There's just so much that flowers got to say to people." Sam smiled and rocked on the balls of his feet.

"So, what does this bouquet tell us?" She wondered.

"Well, the lavender hibiscus is for your delicate beauty and can also mean nice summer – which I totally have had with you. The purple lily represents royalty, because you're sort of my princess. The white gardenia means secret love, purity and joy – which well, we've kinda been a secret for a while, but I am glad that's about to change. And the sunflower represents the sun itself, and expresses warmth and happiness, adoration and longevity... and I hope that we have all of that."

Mercedes' eyes were threatening to spill with tears. "This is very thoughtful, Sam."

"I totally spent the time that I probably should have spent making myself handsome memorizing those flower meanings. Hence, the reason that I look like I always do."

"You made a good choice," she commended and set her vase in the middle of her table. "Guess it's never too early to start with the gushing!" She grabbed her phone and proceeded to take a photo of the bouquet and post it to her Facebook. "Besides, you look hot, as always." She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck for a short, sweet kiss. "Thanks for the flowers, Sam-Monkey."

Sam was tempted to deepen the kiss, but decided that it was best to simply move on. "Oh, I also made this, to go with your bouquet. It's the paper version of what I told you that the flowers mean. I drew 'em, in case you don't know the difference between them. I know I didn't know before the florist told me." She placed the little booklet atop her bouquet, like a card, reached for his hand and grabbed her purse. "I like your new perfume," he said, with a grin.

She grinned right back. The fact that he noticed that really did something to her, but hey – everything that Sam Evans did always made her react. That bouquet was beyond anything that she'd ever expected for a first date, and it hadn't even really gotten started yet.

Going to the movies was fun. It had been years since she did the whole all night hand holding thing and Sam had the best hands for that. They were big and strong. She couldn't help herself from bringing them to her lips, throughout the night, sometimes with kisses, sometimes just to brush them across her lips. Every time, Sam smiled to himself. Every. Single. Time. He had an arm wrapped around her in the theatre and she snuggled up to him. That was new, too. For her, being at the movies was simply sitting there with a friend and watching the screen. With Sam, there was cuddling and a few short kisses. It was nice.

Afterwards, they went to dinner and laughed and talked about the movie, about how nervous they had been before the date, and about what show they were going to marathon watch, next. When Mercedes went to the ladies room, before dessert, she saw that she had several notes on her flowers. She wasn't ready to read them yet. She simply, threw the phone into her purse, reapplied her lip gloss and left the restrooms... where she was quickly surprise attacked with kisses. "Oh!" She yelped, then laughed.

"I wanted some of that fresh lip gloss. That kind is totally boss, by the way. I am here for passion fruit flavored Mermaid lips," he said, took her hand and led the way towards the exit.

"What about dessert?" She wondered.

"Got some to go. We'll have it with the wine when we go stargazing. You haven't forgotten about stargazing have you?" He smiled at her and she smiled back. It was extra contagious tonight. She could hardly stop smiling, and when she did, he did and vice versa. "Is it weird that I'm happier tonight than I have been in a long time, including how happy that I usually am when we're together?" He asked with a goofy wide grin.

"If it is, then I guess we just have to be weird together," she said. "Because, this is the happiest that I have been in a long time, period." Sam pulled her tightly to himself and kissed her, this time, deeper and harder than he had kissed her all night. Then, he dragged her back to his truck to drive out to the lake.

"Just so you know, you _will _eventually go hunting with me," he said.

"I am not going into the woods to shoot at animals with you when I can go into any major food chain and have them do all of that hard and brutal work for me," she said. They were lying on a blanket that Sam had packed, after having dessert with an insect repellant candle burning next to them and Sam's guitar resting on the grass.

"Well, then – you'll have to sing a song for me, at least," he said. She sighed, hard. "You were destined to be a star, Mermaid. The fact that you pretty much refuse to even hum a note is such a disappointment and a tragedy. Voices like yours were meant to sing songs that inspire people and personalities like yours were meant to be shared with an adoring public. If you sing me one song, I promise not to bother you about hunting, again."

She sighed and cleared her throat, then went right into it, "One summer night. We ran away for a while. Laughing, we hurried beneath the sky, to an obscure place to hide, that no one could find..." Mercedes flawlessly belted out an entire Mariah Carey song, acapella, lying on her back and finished it off with, "I hope you appreciated that."

"Babe, that was beautiful!" He said and rolled over to scoot closer to her. He wrapped an arm around her middle and put his nose into her neck. "I don't suppose you'd indulge me with another? I could listen to you sing all night. I could listen to you, for the rest of my life." She smiled and stroked his hair.

"There's a boy I know, he's the one I dream of. Looks into my eyes, takes me to the clouds above. Oh, I lose control – can't seem to get enough. When I wake from dreaming, tell me is it really love..." She completed the song, feeling Sam's heartbeat thudding through his chest, rapidly as she did. When she stopped singing, his lips crashed against hers and she moaned into his kiss. She was singing that song to him, and he knew it. He knew it, and he was answering her. _This_ is how you know... He couldn't fake these feelings, if he ever tried, and he never would. She was who he wanted and this was love, for him.

He paused to breathe and fell over on his back, staring up at the sky. "That was a Whitney song, right? So, you can just sing Whitney and Mariah without batting an eyelash and you don't see the problem with settling for managing a comic book store part time?"

"I'll be a wonderful choir teacher, or music coordinator. I'll have a career in music. I just won't be the next big thing." She sat up and rested on her hands, looking down at him in the moonlight, "And I am fine with that. I gave it a shot and it didn't work out."

"Give it another shot. Give it as many as it takes. Babe," he sat up, too, now and looked deeply into her eyes, "Stars are meant to shine. _YOU _are gonna be a star. You deserve it. I want you to try again."

"I can't. Even if I wanted to do it, I can't get back to LA. I don't have the money to go back there and my parents would _never _help me out again after what happened last time." She leaned forward and told him, "But the fact that you believe in my ability so much warms my heart and heats up other stuff," she said and pressed her nose against his.

"Welp! Sounds like it's time to get home," he said and kissed her quickly, before gathering up their stuff and bringing it to the truck.

Mercedes stood for a while, staring up at the northern star. Since seeing the Princess and the Frog, she'd thought about wishing on that thing. Hell, Tiana did it and got a prince and her dream. She looked towards Sam. She already had her prince, and by the way he spoke, he would help her to get her dream, if she wanted it bad enough to chase it again. "I don't know what the hell to do," she whispered and shut her eyes. Soon, Sam's fingers were intertwined with hers and he guided her back to the truck to bring her home.

Sam's hand tightly held hers on the way to her door. She opened it and he came inside for a night cap. "I hope that I didn't bum you out with all of the singing talk. It's just that I believe in you and what you could become. I hate that you aren't pursuing it anymore, because I can tell that you're still passionate about it."

"Actually, I don't want to discuss it anymore," she said, politely and kicked off her shoes. "I'm going to go freshen up a little." He sat on the couch with his hands between his knees and nodded. He hoped that he hadn't ruined their night. She had been quieter since his goading, but he really was passionate about the fact that her voice was a gift and a blessing. He was serious about it needing to be out there. He got up and wandered into her room, to settle on the bed and wait for her. He took off his shoes and socks and over shirt and went to knock on her bathroom door.

She opened the door, with her hair now pinned up and she had on a bathrobe. "Sorry, was I taking too long?" She'd washed her face and brushed her teeth and both were now beaming.

"No. I'd wait however long it takes for you," he said and planted a kiss on her forehead. She smiled and leaned forward, making her forehead press against his chest. "So, this is the last time that I'll do this and afterwards, I'm just gonna wait on you to come to me about it, but, about that whole being my girlfriend issue..."

"Yes," she said and nodded her head. His green eyes widened and he put his hands in his pockets and blew out a whistle and shook his head. When he pulled his hands out of his pockets, he had something in one of his hands.

"You didn't even give me the chance to be all fancy with the ask," he said.

"You've had so many chances before. I didn't want you to waste your time asking me when I already know what my answer is, this time."

"But still," he said, presenting a box to her, "I wanted to show you this cute little promise ring that I got you – two shades of purple gems and crystals..."he flicked the box open with his thumb and showed it to her.

"I love you, you know that?" She said, with a faint smile... then widened her eyes, shook her head and waved her hands, "I didn't mean it like that!"

He nodded and smiled, "Yeah, I know. But, I love you too." She smiled and sighed. "Can I stay tonight, or is that not a good idea considering that this is our first date and we just became official?" Mercedes pursed her lips, took his hand and guided him to the bed.

"Not until you put your ring on," Sam said and took her little hand into his to put it on her. "Fits perfectly," he said. "And not because I borrowed one of your other rings to make sure, or anything." She playfully hit him across the arm and he wrapped both of his arms around her and kissed her. "Bed time?"

"I wanna talk and cuddle. I always thought that'd be the perfect ending to the perfect date."

"Is that what this was?" He asked, taking off his shirt. "The perfect date?" He started removing his pants, too.

"That's what this has been," she said, taking off her bathrobe. She had beneath it a sleek, thigh length white nightgown and boy shorts. She placed the robe aside and climbed under her covers. "And I know that things'll only get better."

He smiled and climbed in after her, "Yeah, it will." When they were both in bed, looking at each other and smiling, he asked, "So, what do you want to talk about?"

"I have no idea. It seems like everything that needed to be said has already been. Maybe we can just lie here and hold each other?" She suggested.

"Or... you can sing to me again," he suggested.

"We can sing together," she said.

"Even better."


	15. Girl Talk

**Girl Talk**

Sam woke up before she did. She was asleep, with a bit of sunlight illuminating the room just enough for him to see the contours of her face and the outlines of her glorious body. She was still in her boy shorts and the tank from the previous night and he lifted her little hand to kiss the ring that she promised last night that she had no intention of taking off, as long as they were together. Was it bad that he was imagining her hand with rings being added to it? Engagement, wedding, anniversary... he chuckled. _Don't get ahead of yourself, _he had to remind himself. It was easy to think about a future with her. It was as easy as it had been for him to love her.  
Sure, Mercedes had flaws, as everyone did. But he loved it all. Every bit of her. He couldn't tell _her _that, yet - as she had only just become his girlfriend; but he knew that he would eventually tell her - when she was ready to accept it. He smirked at her and leaned in to plant a gentle morning kiss on her lips. Those tender petals were meant for kissing and he had no shame in stealing another two or three before she slightly began to stir. It'd take more than a few kisses to wake her. A chuckle came from him as he moved in closer to her and made the presence of his wood known to her entryway. Her lips puckered into a pout, simply too adorable not to grace with another little kiss and her eyes fluttered, rolled around - attempting focus and achieved it as she looked upon him with extreme judgment... side-eyeing the hell out of him.

"What? It isn't like you have to go to work this morning," he reminded her, softly.

"More of a reason I should enjoy sleeping in," she groaned and buried herself into her pillows, with her backside poking out towards him. She'd soon regret that decision. Sam was tempted to lean over and bite it, since she did push it out there. Instead, he snuggled up behind her and nuzzled his nose and lips into her neck. For mornings, he typically started in on her with the neck nuzzle and the suggestive poke. The neck nuzzles sent tingles down her spine and the poke alerted her little lady that there was an interested friend to visit her. "Sam..." She moaned.

"Hmm?" he asked, grinning to himself as he went in with the ear nibbling, the neck kisses, the shoulder tender love bites. Her backside pushed towards him, out of her control as she tried to resist the feeling that his lips were giving her. He traced his fingers from her shoulders, down her side and they landed on her hips, which he took hold of and began to rub himself against her, from behind. She turned to face him and glared at him, for being so hot. "What, Mermaid?"

"You are not being fair," she said, her bottom lip poked out in a pout as she slid her fingers down his body, from his chest to his abdomen.

He stole another kiss and moaned hungrily as he did. "You keep tempting me. First, you poke this thing at me," he grabbed a handful of her bottom. "Then the lips! And all I have wanted to do from the moment that I woke up was get a taste of your lips."

Her thick, brown thighs spread like a rainbow, the gesture itself some unspoken promise of surrender and submission. She gives him a mischievous smile and lets him know, "I have NO problem with that, Hot Boyfriend." Being referred to as the boyfriend made him want her even more than he had a moment before.

He looked down at her and smiled. "Pervert," he teased, with a playful scoff.

"Is that a problem?" She asked, daring him to affirm such a thought, with her eyebrows lifted, throwing him sass, even early in the morning. She traced her finger along the top seam of his cute robot boxers and commented, "Because he certainly seems to enjoy my perverted side." She reached in and pulled him out, "Yeah - I'd go so far as to say he loves it," and she rolls her eyes at her Sam.

"Can't argue with that," he said, breathily as her hand began to work his friend over. When she pulled him in closer and slid the bottom of her boyshorts aside to try to take him in, he backed away a little. "Don't be so anxious, Hot Girlfriend. You know that there's more to do before he comes inside."

With a giggle, she reached around to slap him on the buns and commanded, "Well, lets get to it, because my little lady is ready to embrace her buddy!" Sam smiled. Someone was feeling extra frisky this morning. Maybe she was feeling like him - reeling from the fact that they were now a legit couple.

By the time they finally got out of bed, it was well past noon. Mercedes went to wash up and made her way to the couch with her laptop, while he washed up. Of course - her facebook page was full of mess. She laughed as the first thing that she saw on her notifications was a comment from Santana: **Mmm hmm... somebody must be laying down the ultimate D, because I have yet to hear anything about this date. **She rolled her eyes and deleted the message from her inbox, simply grateful that her friend hadn't posted such a thing on her wall. Where the heck was her phone? She found it set on the table and checked her messages. Just as she suspected. _Nosy asses. _She laughed out loud and decided to mess with them a little. She wasn't going to contact anyone just yet, but she did go to her facebook to change her status to in a relationship with Super-Duper-Sam-Evans.  
Santana would be at work. If she was correct, she and Brittany had some type of musical coming up in September. (The two of them had a studio and as often as they could dedicated time to schools and colleges to create and teach choreography for plays and field routines.) Santana also sometimes helped with singing lessons. They had been trying to get Mercedes to come into business with them for a while, specifically to handle music selection and voice coaching, but she told them that she would come on board her senior year, when she was finishing up the last bit of her courses.  
Sugar was probably hanging out at her gymnastics studio - which she didn't even work at, but simply owned and sometimes came in to show off her skills to the students and staff. She liked to watch them, especially if they had competitions coming up and if she wasn't there that day - she was probably out shopping or at home hungover. Tina would be off, but probably having a picnic or some other fun Saturday stuff. Quinn would most likely be working. She worked more than anyone else in the group. Mercedes still tingled all over thinking about it. It was exciting, despite the fact that she was pretty nervous and afraid of messing things up.

After Sam washed up, he came out of the bathroom and said, "I can't believe that I don't have any clean clothes here!" He was wrapped in a towel and she froze upon seeing him, even though she had seen him dozens of times just like that and even more bare.  
"Uh.. That's because you haven't done any laundry," She told him.  
"Gonna get right on that," he told her and headed for the laundry closet. When he had a full basket of clothes and her washing supplies, he headed out of the door.  
"Sam... you gonna go outside like that?" She wondered, gesturing at the towel.  
"I don't have any clean clothes here, and I show off my body for a living. At least the towel is covering everything, right now," he chuckled and left the front door.

Mercedes set her laptop aside and looked out of her peephole to see if he was really going to go. Her man had the laundry over one of his shoulders and the other hand holding onto his towel and he strutted himself right to the laundry room as she rushed to the window to watch him. There were couple of women standing outside of a car talking and both of them froze and stared at him, practically drooling as he spoke to them and continued on his way, to Mercedes' amusement. "Wow..." She said and shook her head. "Sam Evans is crazy," she told herself and went to try to find him something to wear. She was shorter than him, but she had more girth, so he might be able to squeeze into something...  
Sam breezed into the apartment with the basket and supplies inside of it and announced, "Just got two phone numbers! Wanna call them together on private and prank 'em later?" She laughed and came out of her room with an old tshirt and some shorts. "I can do an impression, make them think I'm some celebrity. They looked like Taylor Lautner fans. I can do him..."  
"Put this on, Babe. I don't want any of these girls around here throwing their panties at you when you're trying to do regular chores," she chuckled.  
"Territorial? I like this. I should go everywhere in a towel. Though, I think I'd rather like my Captain America towel. Purple isn't really my color..." He said shedding the towel and stepping into the shorts, which were short and slightly tight, particular around his genitals. "I feel like there will be some nuttage shown. Is that better or worse than the towel?" He asked with a concerned look in her direction. Mercedes simply burst into laughter and retrieved the towel from the floor to toss it into the laundry closet. When she turned to face Sam, he was stuck, trying to get into her shirt, so she went to help him. "This one of those that you call a smedium?" He asked.  
"Yes," she said and laughed. "This is certified smedium."

Sam smiled and pulled her close to him, to place a kiss on her lips. Then headed towards the kitchen. "Haven't eaten. Want pancakes?"  
"I think I've got hashbrowns in there. I'd rather those, if you're just feeling like a homemaker."  
"Well, I gotta - you're always pretending that you don't know how to cook."  
"I don't," she said.  
"Uh huh. I remember you being Miss Breakfast that weekend that we hooked up."  
"I made scrambled eggs and toasted some bagels," she said and followed him into the kitchen, to wrap her hands around his middle. "Stop being mean."  
He turned around in her arms to face her and kissed her on the nose, "Just picking with you, Mermaid."  
"Oh good, because I was just being cute to play you like a chump," she said and squeezed his cheeks.  
"Mmm hmm. Using all the Cutiepie Goodness to take my exposed nuttage into the palm of your hand. I see..." She rolled her eyes and laughed. Her boyfriend was truly crazy.

Mercedes made sure that she scheduled a gushing session with her girls, shortly after that day. She accepted the extra key to Sam's place, and asked him if she was supposed to give him one, too. He didn't want her to do anything that she was uncomfortable with, but the fact that she hadn't given him one did sting him, a little. He had to remind himself that she was still learning, even more than he was about being involved with someone, PLUS - he may have been early in giving her a spare key. Maybe _he _was the one who was being abnormal.  
Sugar brought bottles of wine for everyone. Brittany brought fondue supplies and her machine. Tina brought stuff for the fondue, as well as some real food and dessert and Quinn brought the paper and plastic to enjoy it all with. Santana entered and said, "Yeah - definitely getting proper fucked on the regular."  
"I've _been _getting that," Mercedes said with sass. "But, now I get it from _my man!" _She smiled brightly and lifted her shoulders up with anxious excitement.  
Sugar blurted, "I am SO GLAD that you're finally admitting this! I have wanted to discuss this panties and peaches thing for a little while, now..." Tina snickered at that and Quinn bit her lip and raised her eyebrows.  
Santana raised a finger in the air and said, "Uh uh - oh hell no! What panties and peaches thing and why wasn't _I_ made aware of it?"  
Sugar started telling Santana exactly what Artie told her about how they dropped by Sam's one night and Mercedes was there, sleeping over and in the kitchen there were panties and 'what appeared to be a fucked peach pie...'  
"Hey - nobody had sex with a pie. This isn't some cheesy white comedy. We had a little bit of fun and Sam was gonna wait until the next day to clean everything up. I can't go into details, but it was... very nice." Her smile widened and she fanned herself, thinking about that day.  
"Oh, no - Bitch. Trust you are going to tell me some damned details, if it involves panties and damned peach pie. You know all kinda details about what Britt and me do!" Santana said.  
"Because Britt's filter is usually off," Quinn said.  
Mercedes told them, "I have already decided what I _am _and what I am _not _going to tell you. So, I guess we should start up our night?" She settled herself on the couch and confessed, "I have been wanting to gush about him for the past couple of months!"

It felt SO good for her to be able to admit that she had lost her virginity to this wonderful person and he didn't seem to want to be or want to be with anyone else. She told them about how they typically scheduled their time together and some of the conversations that they had.  
Tina smiled and gushed over everything. "I'm really happy for you two! I know how into you Sam is - he and I have been friends for so long and he's the type that really sets out to go above and beyond and treat a woman right. I couldn't think of anyone better for you," she said, eating chocolate dipped fruit.  
Santana had been uncharacteristically silent for most of the time, cradling her bottle of wine and watching the others' reactions, until there came a quiet in the conversation. Then, she asked, "So what's wrong with him?" Quinn rolled her eyes and shook her head at the question. "Look, Malibu Barbie, I know that you think because my girl let you stay with her for a spell in school that it makes you some all time bestie, or something - but the truth is, you're an in and out friend. If she has some issues or that fish lipped motherfucker hurts her - its going to be me and mine that comes for his ass and you'll be on the sidelines suggesting everyone calm down."  
"Why does everything have to be negative from you?" Quinn asked, narrowing her eyes at Santana.  
"Everything has a negative and a positive. I've listened to nearly two hours of sugary big lipped goodness, and now I want to know what the dangers are. What are the risks? What thing is it that might make me have to dig in homeboy's ass at some point in time, during the course of this thing? And unlike you and Tina, I am not bumping uglies with any of his crew - so my only source of information on such details are going to have to come from my girl." Santana rolled her eyes at Quinn and turned up her nose, and, " I know my girl. There is something that she doesn't like all too much that she isn't telling the rest of us."  
Now, Mercedes rolled _her _eyes and laughed, "Everyone has flaws, Tana. Even, me. So, why would I dwell on Sam's?" She grabbed a brownie from a plate on the table and bit it. "That man has me walking on sunshine." Tina and Quinn burst into laughter. Brittany and Sugar both just looked from Santana to Mercedes for a bit. Brittany looked concerned. Sugar looked excited. Mercedes looked over at Santana. who she could tell was not amused and simply gave her a wincing smile.  
Santana nodded and said, "Yeah - I can get behind that logic."

Mercedes hugged Tina and Quinn goodnight and locked the door behind them. When she turned around to Santana, Brittany and Sugar, she put her finger up and said, "Do not start, Tana."  
"I won't," Santana said, taking a swig of her wine.  
Sugar hummed to herself and spun her empty bottle on the floor. "She doesn't have to, because I already know Sam's list of flaws. I probably know more than you do, Cedes. IF anybody's interested..."  
Mercedes said, "Nobody is."  
"I kinda am," Santana said.  
"Sugar - it isn't your place, and how do you think Artie's gonna take it when I tell him that you spilled everything that he's ever told you about his best friend in confidentiality? Pillow talk isn't supposed to go outside of the bedroom, Miss Thing." Mercedes sat down on the couch, between Santana and Brittany. Sugar remained on the floor, but Mercedes could tell that the possibility of Artie being upset with her would keep her mouth shut, at least for the moment.  
Santana shook her head, "All of my girls are dick-whipped now. Well, well, well..."  
"I'm going to need you to turn that bitch dial down several notches," Mercedes commented and Santana frowned.  
"I'll do that for you, Mama. But just know that I'll be watching him and the minute that he messes up, I'm going for that ass."  
"Why can't you just let me be happy?" Mercedes wondered.  
"I am all for your happiness. I revel in it. Your laughter is the best stuff that we've gotten in years from you, and I want that smile that you had tonight to be your default face. What I am not here for is you buying into the illusion that things will be perfect and ending up hurt because you've let your guard down about potential problems," Santana said. "And I don't trust him."  
"Santana doesn't trust anyone with a penis," Brittany commented.  
"Because most of those who have one think with it... and it isn't cut out for that."  
Mercedes touched Santana on the tip of her nose and told her, "Take it from me, okay? Any issue that Sam may or may not have is nothing that concerns you and nothing that's going to hurt me. Just... don't do anything to chase him off. I want to keep him around. I don't think I've ever felt like this about somebody." Santana pressed her lips together and nodded, then wrapped an arm round her and kissed her on the side of the head. Mercedes giggled, a bit tipsy and wrapped an arm around Santana, too. A few moments later, she was asleep.

Santana and Brittany gently laid her on the couch and moved out of the way. Sugar got up and suggested, "Guess we should leave her to sleep. She's a tired Lovebug." Brittany cleaned up any mess they and left and the three left out together, locking the door with the spare key, when they did.  
"I'll hold on to the spare," Santana said. "Like you were holding on to the truth about fishboy, back there."  
Sugar sighed and said, "Santana, if I tell you _anything, _you'd better not say a word to anybody! Mercedes is right - Artie would throw a fit and maybe even never trust me again if he thought that I messed something up for his friend."  
"I'm not saying anything. I just want to know," Santana assured her.  
"Artie was worried about Sam and Mercedes becoming official. The guy has this problem with getting attached quickly and Artie thinks that he's never seen it even this bad before with any other woman that he's seen before Cedes. Sam got really depressed the last time a woman left him and Artie thinks that if stuff goes wrong with Mercedes... Sam might not be able to handle it, because he's already so into her."  
"So, he's the obsessive and possessive type," Santana said. "Wheezy said that this wasn't dangerous, but that sounds pretty damned scary, to be honest."  
"Well... I don't think he'd do anything to hurt her. I can't see him being abusive or anything, though most of what I know about him, I know from Artie..."  
"Yeah - it's cool. And I'm not gonna say anything about what you told me. I'll just be sure to watch him. Cedes doesn't need the first guy that she's fallen in love with to psycho out on her."


	16. The Secret Is Out

_So, a month has passed in the story since Sam and Mercedes got together, but the update should not be TOO far after this one, this time..._

**The Secret is Out**

Sam threw his gym bag over his shoulder and folded his arms, waiting for Blaine to finish gelling his hair. He frowned and tapped his watch, "Bro - I'm your ride. Doesn't that mean _you _should have to work around _my schedule?" _  
Blaine frowned back at him and poked his lip out, "Sam, I told you when we initially began working out together that if I sweat the gel out of my hair that I have to shower and reapply. You know how I feel about going out with unkempt hair!" Sam chuckled with disbelief and tossed his bag to the floor, as he sat on the bench, next to his friend. "What's wrong? where do you have to be?" Blaine wondered.  
"Mermaid is having a bad week. I don't want to do anything to upset her this week. I want her to just be comfortable," Sam said.

The previous two days, Mercedes had complained about stomach cramps, and later on that night, refused to come over. She didn't have to say much more. This was his third tussle with her psychotic hormonal changes, during her time. He wanted to just kind of stay out of her way, but she invited him over and he didn't want to be late. What if she started crying? Her cycle was a ridiculous time for him, for her, for anyone anywhere near her. Blaine quickly finished up his hair (which, to Sam, looked EXACTLY as it had when he'd insisted that he had "muffed" it up.) When Blaine began to put on a bowtie, Sam grabbed him by the wrist and snatched him out of the gym. "Sam!" Blaine cried out, but allowed his friend to drag him away.  
Sam heard one of the women in the gym say to another, on the way out, "I told you there was something with those two..." But, it was important that he left at that moment. It wouldn't be the first nor last time someone presumed that he and Blaine were gay together. He truly didn't care about things like that. Blaine and he had been best friends their senior year and they were close enough that sometimes, their bromance was taken out of context, even at times, it seemed, to Kurt. When they were in Sam's truck, Blaine laughed and said, "The woman at the gym thinks we're lovers, now."  
"She always did. She just thinks it's confirmed, now," Sam said. Blaine smiled and stared out of the window. "She must not know you very well."  
"Why do you say that?" Blaine wondered.  
"I'm a bit rugged for you. What makes her think that a dapper young gentleman like yourself would make the time for some dude like me?" Sam asked and winked at his friend. Blaine fought off smirk and shook his head. It was true. Sam was far from his type, if he had one; but Sam was a good friend and they loved each other.  
"So... Kurt wants us to double date or triple with Rachel and Jesse, sometime soon. He really likes Mercedes," Blaine said.  
"Yeah, he and Mermaid get on even better than he and Rachel. It won't be this week, I know that much, but I'll ask her about it, soon. I think that she had Kurt are having some kind of movie night, or something," Sam said.  
"Actually, I think that its him, Mercedes and Rachel," Blaine said. "They were gonna have a musicals marathon or something."  
"Yeah? Well, Rachel also said that she wanted her and St. James to double with the two of us. It's weird to be making these kinda plans, because you all have all been together for years and I never really did the group date thing. I just kinda hung out with everyone and hoped that Finn would show up, so I wouldn't be the single wheel, or I dragged Marley along, so that there would be another single friend. But, this whole planning out double and triple dates thing - its totally cool. I'm all excited and stuff that she's getting along so well with my friends and making you all into her friends, too."  
Blaine smiled and nodded, "And how are you getting along with _her _friends?" He asked.  
Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head, "She really only has three significant ones - that's Brittany, Sugar and Santana. Brittany is a doll. I love her to pieces. She's adorably funny, in the dumbest way possible, without even knowing it. Sugar is... complicated. She's spoiled. She's opinionated, and even though she's very generous and nice, she can be judgmental and messy. I can't see us making double date plans with her and Artie, even though Artie's my bro. Santana..." Sam let the statement die.  
"She is really something," Blaine said.  
"She is," Sam said, electing not to expound. The truth was that in the past month that he and Mercedes had been together, Santana had gotten on his last nerves. She liked to make fun of his lips, and that was no big deal. It bothered him, at first, but he got over it. She liked to suggest things about his intelligence, which was laughable to him. Because, Brittany. She could be extremely rude and to be honest, he couldn't see how her friends could stand her. But, what really made him mad about her was the fact that she frequently, _frequently, _seemed to be implying that he was going to do something to hurt Mercedes, or making fun of him for being clingy, or making fun of her for "having a puppy." He worried that she might be planting seeds of poison in Mercedes' mind, and it was difficult to speak to Mermaid about her friends' flaws. She knew about them and she even made comments and complaints herself, at times, but if he or someone else seemed to her to be "coming for her girl," she became extremely defensive and got offended and angry.  
Blaine cut into his thoughts with, "Well, maybe we can do a triple date with Brittany and Santana, and that might make it less awkward for you to be around her."  
"Ugh, I prefer to just let her be where she is and to stay where I am," Sam said.

Sam hurried his way to the door, carrying her gift that she didn't ask for, but he knew that she would appreciate and he knocked. She opened the door, after some talking on the inside and stepped out, "Hey... now isn't a good time. Didn't you get my text?" She asked.  
He smiled and said, "_Bloody blood killing me. Don't come_... I came anyway to try to cheer you up. I come bearing gifts, Mermaid..."  
"Mercedes?" They heard a female voice call out from inside.  
"You have to go," Mercedes told him, turned him around and gave him a shove in the back that barely moved him at all, but moved him enough where she shut the door on him. Sam scoffed. On the one hand, she _had _told him not to come. On the other... it obviously wasn't because of why she said. He heard her lock the door and he backed away from it. Obviously, there was someone that she didn't want to see him. He thought about staying right there, on principle, but then decided to go sit inside of his truck, instead.  
It was about an hour later when Mercedes and a thinner, older woman came out and he recognized her right away from the photos in Mermaid's living room... Mrs. Jones came out. She had on a stylish pant suit an reminded him very much of one of those snooty movie moms, with her hands out in front of her as she talked, speaking along with her. She cupped her daughter's face, gave her a hug that looked very 'country clubbish' to Sam and waved at her, "If you're even a minute late for the Christmas in July party..."  
"You know I won't be, Mom. I'm never late for anything at the house. Quinn and I will be there early," he heard Mercedes say. He frowned. What the hell was she talking about? After he watched Mrs. Jones get into a shiny mercedes benz, he pressed his lips together and got out of the truck, with his gifts. He saw Mercedes freeze in shock when she saw him approaching and she looked at her mother's car as it pulled away. "Sam... what are you doing back here?" She asked, watching to see if the woman would turn her car around.  
"I didn't leave. I was so confused by how you sent me away that I couldn't drive. What was all of that about, anyway?" He wondered.  
"That was my mother and she is not a person that I care to bring too many people in my life around," she said.  
"She seems cheery enough. Christmas in July celebrations at her house and all..." He said and she could hear the bitterness in his voice. "You know - it isn't even that you didn't invite me. I get it - we're still new and you don't know if you're ready for me to meet your folks. Okay... but damn, you can't even tell me that its happening? You couldn't say _my mom is here and I don't want her to know that you exist, don't come over_?" Sam extended his gifts forward and she took them and sighed, not knowing what to say. She looked at the gifts and watched Sam turn around and start leaving. "I didn't even intend to stay. I just wanted you to have these."  
"Sammy..." She said and he looked at her. Damn, he was seriously hurt. She sighed and shook her head, "Come inside?" She offered. He blinked a few times, but did so. "Um, so.. you got me some candy and flowers..."  
"Yep," he said and handed her the paper he made for them. He cleared his throat and smoothed his upset out. He could tell that she felt bad and it wasn't his style to try to guilt trip her. "Yeah - I got you some white heather, which indicates that wishes will come true and signifies protection. I know that you feel vulnerable and unstable around this time, when your body's doing what its doing and I wish that I could change that for you. All I can do is work extra hard to make you smile and promise to be here for you and do my hardest to protect you."  
She placed her new flowers in her vase. Sam touched a light purple one and and continued, "Hydrangea is for heartfelt emotions and gratitude for being understood. I want us to understand each other, better than anyone else, even when you're feeling your worse, I want to share it with you and do my best to understand."  
Tears were falling down her face. The last flower, a dark purple one... "Anemone. It has a negative interpretation and a positive. The negative is faded hope or having a feeling of being forsaken. Something that I never want for us, not when we could have each other. The positive is anticipation." He sighed and folded his arms, "I want us to work out, Mercedes. I look forward to it. I just... why do you keep me at bay the way that you do?"  
"My mother stopped by, suddenly. She's a hard person to handle, sometimes. I just didn't want to use that energy trying to balance out handling her and her handling you."  
"I can take care of myself, Babe. So... you and Quinn are going to something at the house?"  
"Yes. They have a Christmas in July celebration and invite all of these rich and snobby folks there. Mike's parents will probably be there, and both Fabrays..." Mercedes shook her head. "It's nothing that you want to go to."  
"You mean that _you _don't want me there," he said.  
"I already know that when my parents meet you, it won't be pretty. Better to not be surrounded by a bunch of their snooty friends. So, no, I _don't _want you there. I'm not ready for that." She wrung her hands as she watched him sit down on the couch. She joined him, cuddled closely and wrapped her arms around him while he sat deep in thought. "Sam?"

He almost didn't say anything. They usually didn't argue and when they did "argue," it generally began with a simple misunderstanding, or with her defending her friends. This time, he knew and anticipated that if he said what was on his mind, it might cause an argument. But, he spoke, anyway. "When you don't want people to know about us - when you kept us a secret from your friends, the way that you keep avoiding telling your parents about me... it makes me feel like I'm some dirty secret that you harbor. Makes me feel like I'm not good enough."  
She stared at him in shock and he could feel her expression, even though he couldn't bring himself to look at her. "That's the opposite of why I keep you to myself, Sam."  
"I'm just telling you how it makes me feel."  
"Well, that makes me feel like this is the main reason that I kept telling you no, in the first place..." she said sadly, under her breath.  
"Mer," he pleaded, now looking at her and seeing her eyes grow distant. _I fucked up..._ he thought. "You're an awesome girlfriend. I just... I want you to want to share me."  
"No!" She snapped. "I have to share you with all of those horny women at the club. I like to keep some things to myself, Sam." His eyes went wide and she bit her lip. She immediately felt bad. His job was never supposed to come up. Most of the time, she _really _didn't have a problem with it...  
"At least I'm good enough for them," he said. "Some of them brag to their friends and have them to come visit me in the VIP room. That's obviously all that I can be good for for women. Some eye candy, bit of frisky fun. You - a secret friendly fuck..."  
"That's so unfair of you to say to me, Sam."  
"But it's fair that you don't want anyone who means anything to you to know that I do too? I mean... its like you don't mean it, Mercedes."  
"I wanted to be a singer since I realized that I had a voice. I sang all of the time. II shared it with everyone." She sighed and shook her head, "They told me what I needed to do with it, took it from me, handled it, controlled it, until it was something that drove me crazy. My friends, my parents are terrible at handling things that I love with any kind of respect or decency and they make me resent things that very important to me. I'm sorry that you don't feel good enough, but I don't know how to make you see that you're more than enough and that's why I want to keep you to myself. I didn't want my parents or Sugar and Santana to ruin this for me. But, of course, I am excellent at doing that myself." She got up and went into her bedroom, ignoring Sam call out to her to please not go.  
He followed her, several minutes later and sat on the bed next to her while she held her pillow tight, willing herself not to cry. "Mermaid... I'm sorry. I didn't think about all of that. I only saw that you weren't introducing me to your parents and it reminded me of high school and how I wasn't good enough for any of the girls I loved. I wasn't good enough in school to do that well. I wasn't good enough in Glee to ever be the lead man. And when my parents lost the house, I felt like I wasn't a good enough son, because I couldn't help them..." She turned her head and sat up to look at him with a surprised and serious face. He chuckled, "Then, I got a job as a dancer. At the time, I'd turned 18, so I didn't have to fake an ID. I was good at it. I was like a natural AND, I was able to help my family out. I was able to start saving up. I was able to do things for girls and they seemed to like me more."  
"Sam."  
"Sometimes, it does feel like its the only thing that I'm good at.." he said, sadly, with dampness glistening on his green eyes. "And when you didn't want me to meet your family, it just stirred up my insecurities. Guys can be insecure, too. Even pretty ones."  
"You are good at everything that you do, Sam," she said, softly. He grimaced, trying not to cry at such a beautiful declaration. "Sam I know that you have a struggle with your writing, but I honestly have full faith in your abilities as an artist and the way that you do your comics. You speak fluent and flawless Na'vi. You bought me flowers for the occasion of my period, just to make me feel better and you STILL made sure that you paid attention to and memorized the meanings of them. You didn't get the leads in Glee, because from what I heard your director had major hardon for giving them to his favorites. Quinn told me that you ducked out of a television production to help volunteer feed the hungry. How can you think that the person who does that... that the person who compromises himself, freshly into adulthood for the sake of his family is not good enough? You're good enough, Sammy. You are _better _than most!" She took his hands into hers and he fell onto her shoulders and inhaled her, then let out a shaky breath. "I love you," she whispered to him, into his hair. His head shot up and he searched her face, for context. Her eyes were lowered. She wouldn't look at him out of fear, but she hadn't brushed it off like she didn't mean it that way. She hadn't said it playfully or in a friendly tone. _I love you, _she had said. Sam cupped her face and forced her to look into his eyes as he brushed her cheeks with his thumbs. She cleared her throat and blinked, still nervous as she stared back at him.  
"I love _you_, Mercedes." They looked into each other's eyes. Her natural inclination was to brush it off and make it as though he meant something else by it. When he saw that look in her eyes and she moved her lips slightly to say something, he rushed in towards her face and gently took her lips captive for his kissing purposes. The issues and the problems they could deal with another time. They had just exchanged I love yous... and _she _started it. Sam smiled against her face and pressed his forehead to hers. "Were you gonna say something, Mermaid?" She shook her head negatively and kept their foreheads together. "Good, there's nothing else to say, right now..."


	17. Mean Girls For Old Bitches

**Mean Girls For Old Bitches**

All of the usual snobs were arriving fashionably late as Mercedes and Quinn greeted them. Everyone stuck with the theme of all white dress and upon entering were given fine white wine. For good measure, with her parents, Mercedes invited Blaine along as one of her friends. Having parents who put funds into Dalton and a hometown celebrity as a sibling made him amongst the "type" that she should be friends with. Her father was Dalton alumni and her mother was a ridiculously superficial social butterfly.  
She and Quinn HATED when either of their parents had a party. When they were younger, Mercedes hated them, more - as she always felt that she had to pretend to be better than she was, but she would have Quinn's skinny bitch ass there to point out all of her flaws while their snooty mothers tried to parade them and insult the opposite. Mercedes usually ended up feeling like the lowest dirt.

Mrs. Jones RELISHED in the fact that Quinn had a teenage pregnancy. She was nothing but generous to Quinn when she lived there, but now - it was always one of her tickets when doing the 'who's better' dance with Judy Fabray. That shit was simply annoying to both Mercedes and Quinn, now. "They're just too old for that," Quinn said when she saw the two women giggling together, knowing that within an hour or less, they would use honey sweet tones to go at each other's throats.

"It's like Mean Girls for old bitches..." Mercedes agreed and she and Quinn began to giggle together. Mercedes stopped when she saw Sam coming up, with Blaine. "What. The. Hell..." Blaine had obviously dressed Sam. He looked absolutely delicious, but... what was he doing here?  
Quinn looked to see Sam and shook her head, "This is not good," she said.  
When the two came to the door, Sam tried to kiss Mercedes, but she shied from the contact and gave him a cordial hug, "I didn't intend to see you here," she told him.  
"I didn't expect you to invite one of my best friends... who you met through me, and NOT invite me," she said.  
Quinn said sternly, "You don't understand how this works..."  
"Mercedes, Quinn... I hope that you don't intend to linger with the guests in the doorway. It's rude. Invite them inside, already and since neither of these young men are familiar to me, I suppose that they're your guests," Mrs. Jones said, with a brilliant smile.  
Mercedes quickly clarified, "This is my friend, Blaine Anderson, son of Akina and Hector Anderson, and his best friend, Sam."  
Quinn added, "Who is also a friend of ours."  
Mercedes said, "Yes - he's a friend, too. I didn't know he was coming, but the more the merrier. Merry Christmas in July!" She cheered and reached for a glass of wine of her own to gulp down. Mrs. Jones' eyes studied Sam... odd for her, because Blaine had been pointed out as the 'worthy' one, and she was all about ignoring nobodies. But, Mercedes' transparent ass was drawing attention to the tension between herself and Sam. Sam was pretty convincingly playing things off as he smiled at the Jones women.  
Quinn said, "I think that we've been manning the door too long. Where the hell are the servants for this thing, anyway, Milzie?"

Mrs. Jones smiled and waved over some for the girls. "Come inside, young men. You know, Mercy's father is Dalton alumni. Her brother attended as well and we sent her to their sister school, hoping that some of the others would rub off on her. But, we may as well have sent her to McKinley!" She chuckled and rubbed Quinn's arm, "No offense, Honey. You know that you're an exception amongst those types."  
"Well, I graduated from McKinley..." When the woman turned abruptly to face him, he quickly said, "I went through a phase where I suppose I wanted to go slumming."  
Sam's eyes widened as he tried to fight off a laugh.  
"How unfortunate," Mrs. Jones said. "I hope that you learned your lesson and at least went to a good college. Mercy threw her future away in LA and came back here to be a damn music teacher, which of course is fine, but we raised her for greatness and she's given us a music teacher."  
"Music teachers are pretty cool, but your daughter has star potential. Have you ever heard her sing?" Sam asked.  
Mercedes grabbed another glass of wine and handed it to him, "Sam, our standards are a little bit different around here than Wherever, Tennessee." She smiled at her mother and shook her head, "Trust me, I know that I made a mistake in LA. Blaine, how about you prep your friends next time before bringing them into settings they're unfamiliar with."  
"My mistake," Blaine said. Now, Sam was clearly affected, though he continued to smile.  
Mrs. Jones waved a hand and said, "My daughter can be melodramatic. Everyone is welcome, here. It's Christmas."  
"It's not, but..." Sam mumbled.  
"IN JULY!" She spoke over him. "I love celebrations. Oh! I am SO SORRY!" She said, turning quickly to face them. "I am Millicent Covington-Jones, but everyone calls me Milzie and IF you dare call me Mrs. Jones, I will have you escorted out by guards."  
Sam and Blaine chuckled, but Quinn and Mercedes quickly said in unison, "She's serious."  
Blaine's face straightened, but Sam laughed harder. "I don't know what's funnier, the thought of somebody getting kicked out, or the fact that she prefers to be called 'Milzie.'" Blaine gave him a small smirk, but his eyes squinted. Sam knew that look. Blaine wanted him to shut up. No such luck. "So, Milzie! Where is it that YOU went to school?" Sam asked. "you have a hint of Southern in your accent, do you not?"  
"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid. I was born in Georgia, raised in Atlanta until middle school, when my family relocated to Lima. I hated this place, to be honest, but this is where I met Bishop. We met in high school and we have been together SINCE. He went to Columbia and I followed him, attending Barnard..."

Blaine shook his head, "I thought that my parents were horrible. Not trying to say that yours are, Mercedes! Milzie is just kinda..."  
"No, they're horrible," She said. She rubbed Sam's arm and asked, "Are you alright?"  
"Yeah - but you seem a bit drunk."  
"My mom drives me to drink," Mercedes admitted.  
"I think she's alright."  
"That's because she doesn't know about us. If she did, she would go in for you. Right now, she thinks that you're a friend of a friend."  
"I don't care for that title, too much - but I understand that she stresses you out." He sighed and rubbed the hand that was on his arm, smiling down at the lovely little lady in white, "You look really beautiful in that, by the way." Mercedes lowered her head to smile brightly, afraid that her cheeks were darkening. And in that moment, things went wrong... Sam smirked and used his finger to pull her face up and see the fruits of his compliment - apple cheeks just as deep red and he leaned in and kissed her on one of them. It was soft, but swift. It was enough for Judy Fabray to see.

While Sam and Mercedes were yet talking, alone in the comfortably crowded room, Judy watched them and taunted Milicent. "Oh, Milzie, is Mercy now _dating," s_he chuckled, "Sam Evans?" Milzie turned to see her daughter, laughing at the blond man and touching his arm with one hand and her belly with the other... laughing in a way that she had never really seen her laugh before. But, she would never give Judy the satisfaction.  
"Oh, hush! She invited the Anderson boy and this boy came along with him. Mercy probably barely even knows that boy."  
"That eye contact between them most definitely tells an altogether different story," Judy commented, smugly.  
Milzie's eyebrow raised and she said, "Well, even if there is something there, he seems like a nice enough boy, though not too bright. Mercedes is probably just being polite. Now, he and Quinn - that would be adorable, wouldn't it? They would be a regular Ken and Barbie. You wouldn't have to be forced to tolerate that goon with the Mohawk as a future son-in-law. At least this one I would be willing to invite to gatherings. If I ever see that Mohawk boy that Quinn's been with for all these years on my property, I'll call the police."  
Judy bit back a glare and forced a smile as she lied, "Oh, Noah grows on you. I know that the last time he was here was a disaster, but his manners have improved and if Quinn does marry him, at least he's proven that he can work hard and make money... well... a little, at least. As a matter of fact, I suppose that he and Sam are probably on equal footing in the tolerable friend, intolerable future son-in-law category. Well... no. They aren't , because Quinn's a lawyer and Mercy is a failed singer. I mean, far be it from me to judge Mercy's choices, but I am quite relieved that Quinn and Sam's high school love affair did not extend beyond a few months. She dated him when he was actually acceptable. Unlike now - so you should hope that the looks in their eyes is some passing idea..."  
"Mercedes doesn't make the best decisions, but she'll learn from any mistake that she makes," Milzie said.  
"Good. Don't get me wrong, it isn't Sam's fault that his family lost everything when he was in high school and they were actually homeless for a time. How could we hold it against him that he took up stripping as a teenager to help them out financially?" Milzie gasped and looked at Mercedes and Sam still talking to each other, "And its not SO bad that he was the stupidest kid in his graduating class or that he still strips. Mercy's surely just in the mood for some hot entertainment."  
Milzie snapped, "She barely knows him! She's probably trying to hook him up with one of her many loser friends."  
"Except her friends are all more successful than she is, aren't they?" Judy seriously asked Milzie, who seriously believed the same thing. Judy added, "Maybe she's trying not to wander too far from her league."  
"Maybe he's trying to find himself a sugar momma, because he knows that her family has money! Not in Milzie's house, you don't , you big lipped, stripping, dumb country fuck..." Milzie marched over to her daughter, with Judy following, in amusement. "Sam Evans," she said and he turned and looked shocked at her as the smirk on her face told that something was afoot. "I have just been told that you are a professional dancer! Maybe at some point, when the celebration allows, I might procure your services for an event."  
Sam looked at Mercedes and saw her with a death grip on her champagne flute - that deer in headlights look on her face - so adorable... But, he told Milzie, "That would be extremely awkward..."  
"Oh, why? You're a professional_ dancer. _I'm sure that you aren't shy!" Judy chimed in, looking from Sam to Mercedes, expectantly.  
Mercedes now interrupted with, "It would be awkward because Sam's no professional dancer! Our Glee clubs competed against each other all the time in high school. The kid can barely keep a beat and he was always losing his place in the choreography."  
Sam grimaced, "I did an excellent body roll," he commented.  
"Which, I'm sure improved with time," Judy said, bubbly. Sam smiled and nodded, but Mercedes continued with a scoff..  
"Sam has a home-based self-publishing business!" She snapped.  
"Yeah - I make comic books myself and sell them at the Completely Nerdgasmic Comics store," he said.  
Judy clapped her hands together, "Oh, you mean that place that Mercy works while she's _still _going to school!" She placed a hand on Mercedes' chin and said, "I can't keep telling you how brave it is of you not to try to do too much while aiming to fulfill your little dream of being a music teacher."  
Quinn groaned and rolled her eyes. Mercedes forced a smile at Judy, while Milzie removed the woman's hand from her daughter's face and replied to the woman, "Yes, because if she did do too much, she might end up nearly flunking out, like Quinn almost did in high school."  
Judy blinked and rubbed Quinn's back as she commented, "I will admit that I was worried for a bit. But at least my baby redeemed herself by getting accepted into Yale."  
"Yes, and then she accepted a Yale professor into her bed," Milzie said with a smile.  
"Oh... wow..." Sam said as his eyes widened and he looked at Mercedes, who was far too embarrassed to look anywhere but inside of her flute.  
She did reply, "This is simply the real Jude and Milzie coming out."  
Judy was saying, "And, as you said, he was an educated man who teaches at an Ivy League school! Quinn could have done worse for herself. She could be obviously having sex or at the very least being infatuated by a comic book self publishing stripper... _Not that anyone here is that and not that anyone else here is involved with such a person..."_  
Milzie nodded her head and her nostrils flared, though she still wore a smile, "Well,, Quinn did do worse for herself, didn't she? Because its a fact and not just one dumb blonde's speculation that Quinn dated such a person at one point, and we all know that right now, she is with a borderline mentally deficient pool cleaner... who cheats!"  
"Whoa," Sam said, wishing he could stop this train wreck that the other guests were pretending not to see, but socializing comfortably as they slyly stared on.  
"And Mercy's seeing, who again? Has she even been on one date that you know of since that burly boy in school?" Judy asked.  
Milzie said, "Of course she has! Mercy has been socially seeing a man now for years! He was a star athlete, graduated well, went to a wonderful school, has a degree and is one of the most successful sports agents his age, for big name athletes!" The woman chuckled lightly and flipped her hair behind her shoulder.  
Judy guffawed and said, "Oh, HIM! What's his name again, Mercy?" They all looked at a shocked, on the spot Mercedes with wide eyes, because she forgot all about that dude, to be honest, but she'd never tell them that...  
"Anthony," Quinn quickly saved.  
Judy frowned at her daughter and snarled, "Thank you, _Mercy."_  
Sam folded his arms, trying not to look bothered (and failing) as he asked, "So there _is _an Anthony?" He looked at Mercedes a little harder than she would have wanted in front of her mother and the others.  
"Anthony's too busy with real success to be concerned about a girl that he sometimes sees when he comes to Lima to visit his parents," Mercedes said with a smile.  
"Don't be ridiculous. He adores you," Milzie said and waved her daughter off.  
Sam asked, "So, Anthony is...?"  
Simultaneously, the Jones women and Judy answered:  
Mercedes: A friend  
Milzie: Her future husband.  
Judy: Someone that Milzie pretends is interested in her daughter to not admit that the girl has nobody.  
Mercedes sighed as Judy and Milzie practically pressed their noses together snarling and arguing under their breath with bared teeth that were trying to fake smiles.  
Sam whispered to Mercedes, "Suddenly, I would rather be around Sugar and Santana."  
"I would rather be anywhere, but here," she said back.  
He smiled deviously at her and she looked back at him confused. Before she could ask him what, he snatched her hand and began to lead her out. She followed, partially drunk, partially in shock as they hand and hand headed outside. Sam waved to her flabbergasted mother on the way out of the front door and Judy cackled and clapped her hands. Mercedes gasped, when she finally realized what had just happened... "My mom is gonna lose her shit!" She said.  
"Your mom seems as though her shit's been lost for awhile," he said.  
"But, but..." Mercedes tried to speak.  
"She now knows and even though I'm sure it makes her sick to death, its better that she knows now than in the future, some time AFTER all of this, today." He smiled and wrapped his arm around her and kissed her temple. "I have been wanting to put my lips on you all afternoon," he said and gave her a proper kiss on the way to his truck.

A trip to the park in her fancy white dress cheered her up. She knew that Milzie would be livid, not only about the fact that she and Sam were clearly together, but also because of the fact that she left the party _early, _hand in hand with him. Should she try to make up some kind of lie? She wasn't good at that kind of thing. She kept it real for lack of knowing how to play most things off... Ugh - Milzie was probably smiling through layers of wrath as she laughed at Sam's impressions of her mom while he was pushing her on the swing. That took talent.  
"She hates you," Mercedes said.  
"I'll win her over," Sam promised.  
"No. That woman is unmovable," Mercedes said.  
"Well, maybe your dad will like me," Sam said. She stopped laughing, stopped smiling, became a wall, no longer even kicking her legs to propel herself on the swing. Sam reached for the chains and forced her to a halt. "What's up?"  
"I had completely forgotten about him," she said, sadly.  
"He never tried to make himself seen tonight," Sam commented.  
"He wasn't there. My dad hates these kinds of gatherings. He went on some kind of fishing trip or something, instead."  
"I go fishing! That's my ticket in - Mr. Jones!" Sam said.  
"No..." Mercedes said and shook her head. "Mr. Jones is nobody's ticket anywhere. My mom's crazy, but I can handle her. He... He just hurts my feelings. Sam, my mom is the NICE one." Sam's eyes widened and he blew out a breath, but he took her hand, kissed it and smiled. "I know you're thinking that he can't be so bad, but you didn't believe me when I tried to tell you about my mom. They never attended anything that I was ever a part of, because my mom only does things to be noticed and my dad refuses to participate in things that he finds not of substance. Not my mom's parties, not my graduation..." She lowered her head.  
"Your dad didn't go your graduation?" Sam asked incredulously.  
She chuckled, sadly, "My PARENTS didn't go to my graduation." Sam's jaws moved as he ground his teeth together. She shrugged and said, "It fell on the day that Milzie had a retreat with the governor's wife and some other ladies. My dad simply saw no reason to see me get handed a diploma that I 'wasn't going to use for anything anyway' were his exact words. He didn't support me wanting to be a singer and he wasn't going to waste his time attending a ceremony that was celebrating me chasing after foolishness." Sam cupped her face and gave her a long, lingering kiss on the lips. She smiled into the kiss and let him guide her back to his truck so that they could head home.

Mercedes got up fairly early and washed up, her hair pulled into a messy bob, cleaning up around the apartment in a pair of tights and a t-shirt. When she heard the distinct knock, she expected it and opened the door and stepped out of the way for Hurricane Milzie to barge inside. "Of course, I'm sure you realize that Judy Fabray is eating this up! As if she actually has any room to gloat. Quinn may be a lawyer, but she's one of the worse lawyers in town and only at that firm because of her father's friendship with one of the partners. Still - when you have a daughter who is a lawyer, she can shamelessly have sex with whomever she chooses, even a loser like that dirty Mohawk boy, but _you... _You should not be even fraternizing with some homeless artist stripper, much less WHATEVER it is that you ARE doing with him - and believe me, I do NOT want to know what that is!"  
After the woman finished her tangent, she sigh and folded her arms as she tried to catch her breath. "Ok, Mom. You want some tea or freshly squeezed juice?"  
"Juice, please. And what do you mean by ok?" Milzie asked.  
"I meant, 'ok - I hear everything that you said and I know how you feel about it...' And you're always entitled to your opinion." They went into the kitchen as they talked.  
"That is not the ok that you need to be meaning. You need to mean, 'Ok, Mom - you're absolutely right, just like you were about me going to LA and falling flat on my face and I'm sorry that I don't exercise more wisdom and class before I make decisions.' Do you know what Bishop would say if he ever found out about that boy?"  
"I know that _you _won't tell him and that if anybody else tells him, he'll shut them down for gossiping," Mercedes said, retrieving the fruit for the juice.  
"I'm certainly NOT going to tell him, or anyone else! What POSSESSED you to do this to yourself?" Milzie asked.  
"He's a great guy," Mercedes said. "Money isn't everything, but he makes more than I do, anyway."  
"Stripping!"Milzie said, placing a hand over her heart and shaking her head.  
"There's nothing wrong with that. Mom. Everyone doesn't have the same means that you and Dad and the Fabrays and Andersons and others have."  
"No, they don't - and we're supposed to leave them in their world and stay in ours!"  
Mercedes sighed and nodded, "Ok." Milzie opened her mouth to ask what kind of ok, but quickly, Mercedes clarified, "The same kind of ok as before. Mom... you aren't going to convince me that Sam and I shouldn't be together. I'm sorry if that bothers you."  
"No, you aren't," Milzie snapped and rolled her eyes.  
"No, I'm not," Mercedes agreed and set the glass of juice on the counter in front of her mother.  
"Well, I'm not sorry about how I know this will turn out. It will turn out like every single thing that you ventured out on your own to do without your good sense. You'll try at it and be so happy with yourself for your peanut accomplishments, Bishop will tear you apart, and you'll fail, then quit, then come apologize, promising not to be so stupid again... but from the looks of things, you will never learn your damn lesson. A boy like that would only use a girl like you up for all that shes good for and move along to the next thing."  
"He's nothing like that," Mercedes started.  
"I hope for your sake that you're just doing this to get under my skin, or because you're bored and his dumb ass amuses you, because if you seriously think that you're more than some fascinating curiosity to that kid, you're going to be so upset when it fall apart and he marries Brittany, or somebody like her." Milzie reached for her juice and looked into the glass. "It's too thick. I'll have tea, instead," she said with a smile. Mercedes tried to force smile back at her, but she couldn't hide that those words cut her to her core. She'd given Shane up for fear of him finding something better and she had much deeper feelings for Sam.  
Of course, she believed he could do better. She wondered all of the time when he seemed like he had something on his mind if he was thinking of somebody else, but then she would call his name to get his attention and when he looked at her, nothing else seemed to exist, for _either _of them. She wasn't going to let her mother break her down with her negativity. "I'm sorry that I offered tea... I don't even have any," she said, sifting through her cabinets.  
"No biggie. I'll get a drive through smoothie. Smooches," Milzie cheered as she headed for the door, seemingly pleased with herself. She was thinking that she had done her damage, that Mercedes was going to be that weak girl whose mother bullied her and frightened her into giving up something she wanted. She simply didn't understand. This wasn't just about wanting Sam, it was about what she didn't want, as well. She didn't want to be without him. She didn't want to be that woman she was when they got together, and damn it, she refused to be!


	18. Girl Put Your Records On

**Girl, Put Your Records On**

Mercedes set her things up in the bathroom, while Maurice peeked from the doorway. She turned and they stared at each other before he ran off and she sighed. In her head, she heard Invader Zim's voice say, "That HORRIBLE monkey!" And she laughed about it. "Hey, Sam! How about an Invader Zim marathon later?" She called out.

"Score!" He cheered from his workspace. Mercedes was officially leaving a few essentials at his place, which she had bought specifically to leave at his place. Before, she would leave things if she knew she would be back the next night, but if things didn't turn out that way, she had to come over to get her stuff or go without that night. Sometimes, she simply forgot stuff there and spent half of her morning prep time wondering what she did with her toothbrush or whatever. Now, she would have stuff here, so that she didn't even have to worry about it.

Sam was working on the material that he would be bringing with him in a couple of months to the event that Jeremiah had invited them to, in most of his free time; but he didn't mind Mercedes being around while he worked. He said hearing her in other rooms singing or being terrorized by Maurice helped him to work. She didn't find that part about Maurice comical. That monkey was something else always stalking her around the apartment when he was out of his cage, and occasionally digging through her belongings. Now, he seemed to be spying on her, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing. "Sam! Maurice keeps coming in here and staring at me! I think he's plotting something!" She called out when the monkey passed the bathroom again.

"He's always like that when changes are being made around here. Ignore him, Babe," Sam called out. She sighed and finished up in the bathroom. Next, she put away some panties and lingerie into a drawer that Sam emptied out for her. She already had a few tanks and boy shorts that she had left behind and he had washed for her.

"Your place looks a mess!" She told him as she entered the room. "I guess that I can straighten up around here while you work."

"That's not necessary, Mermaid. I'll clean up, soon." Sam told her.

"You said that a few days ago. You have to work on your material for the convention; I understand. I know how to tidy up. I'll do that while you work and if you aren't done by the time that I am, you can stop and take a nookie break."

"What's this, you say? It's t9ime for nookie, already?" He asked, setting his pencil down.

"I said after I clean up around here, if you aren't done working for the day…" He had already advanced on her and was lifting her up with her legs wrapping around him. "Sam…"

"Hmmm?" He asked, silencing her with kisses as he took her to the couch.

"This place is filthy. You aren't sexing me up nor down in here, as long as it looks like this," she said, wriggling from him. Sam pouted, but quickly began to try to clean up. She put a hand on her hip. "Seriously? That's all it takes to actually get you to clean up?" She asked.

"If I let you do it by yourself, it'll take longer. You're the one bribing me with your favorite pancakes!" He defended.

"I wasn't bribing you!" She said back, helping him to clean things up. "How do you feel about pizza tonight?" She asked.

"No can do, for me. I have to get back to a stricter diet. Boss told me that I have noticeable flab," he said, with a frown.

"Noticeable flab? Does she think that anybody is going to be looking at that when you're shaking your junk?" She asked.

"Obviously. I know that they probably won't, but these abs do pay my bills, so I should look after them," he replied.

"Maybe after the convention, other opportunities will open up for you," Mercedes said, with a bit of sorrow in her tone.

"Yeah – I'm hoping so. That's my motivation for how hard I've been working." He pulled her close to him and looked in her eyes, "I want something better, for us… you you," he told her and gave her a kiss. "I know that it doesn't bother you, but it's started to bother me. I'm not as comfortable doing it anymore."

"I support whatever you decide to do," she commented. "So, some fish or chicken?"

"I've got both in the kitchen, but if you don't feel like cooking, I can order something and pick it up," he said.

"I'll cook tomorrow," she promised.

"We've gotten pretty comfortable with just doing regular stuff at home together. I think we do it and enjoy it more than stuff out there… You… could move in, you know…" Sam suggested. When her eyes widened and she looked at him, he explained, "It would help out with the money issues that have come up since the semester started and we practically live together, now. I mean – you don't have to. I'm just saying, that if you want to, the opportunity is here." He booped her across the nose and gave her a crooked smile.

Mercedes, Santana and Sugar sorted through the instrumental CDs, while Santana talked, "Even if it doesn't go anywhere, why not give it another shot? People get famous from being online all of the time. And if you have me there to point out all the fault in the industry for hating on women who aren't boxed beauties and on the fact that if you were white, they would have given you a el a long time ago, you might be able to get the underground attention that you need AND even appeal to the hipsters."

"Why would I be trying to appeal to the hipsters?" Mercedes asked.

"I don't know. Aren't they supposed to be the cool people of today, or something?" Santana asked. "I don't keep up with it. I don't even think that I actually know what a hipster is, exactly."

Sugar commented, "You can appeal to the gays. Sing a song about acceptance and stuff and you'll become the spokesperson and all the straight little white girls will rally around you, on behalf of the gays."

Santana snickered, "Pop music in a nutshell."

"I happen to know a thing or two about this. Hello! I am the face of popular," Sugar said. "Nothing is considered great unless I say so… or someone like me. You have the talent, Mercedes. You just need to be properly marketed." Sugar took a CD out of Mercedes' hand and shook her head, "You can't do R&B. You have to, have to, have to come out into the world of pop, first and kiss some studio ass before you do what it is that you love."

"Guys… I just want to see where my real talent can take me. I want to not have to worry about whether or not I have to go without the Internet for a couple of months, to make sure that my necessary bills are paid. I don't want my mom bringing me groceries that I hate, because she knows that I can't afford food, because of my rent. I don't want Sam to pick up extra shifts so I can have gas in my car."

"I thought that Sam has been pretty much taking care of your food and luxuries lately, anyway. I mean, if he isn't, what exactly is his purpose?" Sugar asked.

"He has been, but it isn't his responsibility to do that. The main reason he's worked at the club is because he can't sustain himself on the comics, alone. And now, he's worrying about me. With me back in school, my hours shift to part time and thus, the struggle begins. Summer was good, but this is becoming a bit much. I can't ask him to be there for me, like he's been. He has his own stuff to do," Mercedes said.

Santana commented, "You're welcome to move in with Britt and I when your lease at your apartment is up. It'll help you save some money and we have the room for it."

"Oh my God! We should totally get a Troubletones pad!" Sugar cheered. "The four of us can stay at a dwelling of my choosing. I'll send Artie to Sam's and whenever we need some couples time, Artie can come over and you can go to Sam's!" She went on. Santana simply gave her one of her infamous 'Whatever, bitch' faces and turned to the CDs again.

"Actually, I've been thinking about moving in with Sam," Mercedes admitted. Now, Sugar and Santana both turned to look at her, hard. "It wouldn't be a long term arrangement, but we're both at each other's places right now, as is. This way, less rent and utilities, more cash…"

"Less freedom, more having to be around each other," Sugar commented.

"Less common sense, more silly lovesick nonsense," Santana added.

"See, this is why I try not to tell you two anything. You both live with your significant others," Mercedes said.

Santana scoffed and asked, "Did you just compare your summer fling to the long term love that I have had with my best friend and had for years before we ever moved in together? Or, did you compare Sugar and Artie's albeit dysfunctional, long time on again off again, maybe, maybe not that they're both hella comfortable with and were that way for years before ever moving together to you rushing in like a fool with the first guy that you dropped your panties for?"

"Bitch," Mercedes said and shook her head, turning away.

"Am I lying?" Santana asked.

Sugar said, softer, "Mercedes, I think that what Santana is trying to say is that it might be a bit soon for you and Sam to be going into that. You two have only really known each other for a few months. It takes some time before people will peel off layers of themselves and get down to the stuff that you'll have to deal with on a daily basis if you spend a lot of time around their home front."

"When the two of you are struggling college students with a really good solution to some of your cash problems, come back and see me," Mercedes said.

"I've already done that!" Santana snapped. "I did it and it was pretty shitty. But I spent that time away from Britt, because I knew better and I knew that it would only hurt our relationship if we kept trying to make it into some kind of damned fairy tale. Life isn't that. We have something remarkable, right now, but if I had lived with Brittany during my poor woman's woes, we probably wouldn't even be friends, right now. If that's what the hell you want for you and Fishy McGuire, more power to you!" Santana stormed off towards another section of music.

Sugar said, "Well, if you're going to move in with Sam, you might need more space. His place is kinda only meant for one person, I think."

"It's not a long term thing," Mercedes said. "My current lease ends at the end of September and he's mentioned that I can stay with him and have a chance to save up for a new car. Mine is crap, as everyone knows."

"And… after you get a new car, then you'll magically have enough money to live on your own again?" Sugar asked, confused.

"No. By that time, I'm hoping that Sam's comics have brought him some luck and if not," she lifted her fistful of CDs, "I'm shooting for the stars, again."

Sugar said, "Well, I'm happy for you, whatever you decide. I just want to see you be sunshine. Santana just wants the best for you, too. I think she's just worried that you maybe place too much stock in Sam. I think that if she has more time to get to know him, she'll come around."

"I'm not here for her coming around. Sam is my guy and she is my friend. She's going to have to accept that unless he's done something to hurt me or to hurt her, she doesn't have the right to go into bitch mode on or about him." She headed for the counter and Santana came up now, too.

They looked at each other and Mercedes rolled her eyes. Santana stifled a chuckle and folded her arms. "I will never think that this is a good idea, so long as I don't see any proof of that, but it's not my place. But, I am gonna continue to watch him and the moment he fucks up, I'm stepping in."

"Okay," Mercedes said and paid for her product. She didn't have time to be going back and forth with Santana today. Instead, she completely changed the subject. "I think that I'm going to go with some Adele for the first video."

Santana suggested, "You may want to upload several of them, different artists and different genres. Of course the crew is going to like and share them, through all of the avenues. I'm going to make my rant video about how you got the shaft when you were a backup singer and how they fucked up letting you go. That'll make my followers interested in checking you out. You can guest on Fondue for Two."

"She still does that?" Mercedes asked.

Sugar gasped and asked, "You mean, you don't watch it?"

"The Glee club director at McKinley has called me in to help his students with some stuff. I figure that I can bring you along and you can help them with voice training… That should put you on the radar of the high school kids in this area and maybe they'll spread you around some to their social networking folks."

"I'll have you do a few demos of music that some of the girls at the gym have for routines, so that they'll get familiar with you, too," Sugar said.

Santana smirked and locked her arm into Mercedes,' "Let's make your ass a star, now."

Mercedes recorded videos of her singing _Together Again_ by Janet Jackson, _Still I Rise_ by Yolanda Adams, _On the Radio_ by Donna Summer, _Nobody's Supposed to Be Here _by Deborah Cox, _Dangerously in Love _by Beyonce, and _Someone Like You _by Adele, before she felt like she was tired of singing. She sighed and wondered if any of them were good enough to upload, and if so, which ones? She looked through her list of songs to see what else she might sing – because something else might be better. _I Need You _by Jazmine Sullivan, _At Your Best (You Are Love) _by Aaliyah (well, by the Isley Brothers, but she would sing it more in the fashion of Aaliyah)…

Her phone buzzed and she saw that it was Sam texting that he was on his way over. She started to put her things away when she heard a knock and opened the door. "Hey!" He said, brandishing his guitar. "Thought that I would give you another genre that you might not have gone for."

"Who told you?" She asked.

"Sugar. You know – you can stop asking that when I know things that I maybe shouldn't. It's almost always going to be Sugar. Anyway. I know you've got your pop covered, your R&B, your oldies, but I'll bet that you haven't sang one country song and I know you probably know one or two. I probably know how to play them on my guitar."

"I know Rosemary's Granddaughter. Well… I know the rhythm. I'd have to look up the lyrics. I only know bits and pieces."

"That's a pretty good one. I can play it. You know _I Hope You Dance_?"

"Yeah. From a Tyler Perry movie," she said.

"Did you know that before Whitney redesigned and immortalized _I Will Always Love You, _IT was a country song, too?" He asked.

"Of course. I am a pro at Whitney trivia," she said and led him to the table. "Want to give me honest critiques on some of the stuff that I have so far?" She wondered.

"Sure," he said and set his guitar on the table.

"I'm gonna go make some tea," she told him. Sam sat down and began to play the videos. She came back to see him intently watching her sing _Nobody's Supposed to Be Here. _He stopped it when she entered and looked up at her with damp eyes.

"You. Are. Spectacular." He shook his head. "I hope you don't mind, I've started uploading all of these."

"WHAT?" she asked. "I haven't polished them up or anything!" She fussed.

"They're perfect, Mermaid. You're going to be a hit, Baby. You wanna practice the country stuff?" He asked.

"I don't do much practicing," she told him.

"What do you mean?" He wondered.

She smiled and shrugged. "I don't do much practicing. I sing songs with emotion…" She shrugged again.

"Like that night of our first date. Underneath the Stars and How Will I Know – free of flaw, off the cuff," he remembered.

"Yep," she said. "I plan on getting more serious about practicing, especially since I'm pretty out of practice, aside from singing in the choir, at church. But, get the camera ready. We'll do _I Hope You Dance,_ then the tea should be ready. I'll have some tea and look up the lyrics for _Who I Am, _then – I might need to practice it a time or two before we record it. After that, you can maybe help me figure out what songs I'm going to post next week."

"Heroes themed stuff," he said. "That way, I can get away with posting it on my different networking sites."

"Heroes themed stuff… like… _We Don't Need Another Hero_?"

"Awesome! I didn't even think about that one! I was thinking about Bowie, Nickleback, Holding out for a Hero."

"White stuff," she said. "I mean – maybe I can." She shrugged. "I definitely know I can do Bonnie Tyler. Tina's already been decided. I'm going to go with Mariah's Hero, as opposed to Bowie. I just don't think that's my field," she told him.

"Make it your field," he told her. "You can sing anything. It doesn't necessarily have to be done just like it always was. Take it and make it your own."

"Hero stuff, huh?" she said and smirked to herself. "You and your heroes," she commented.

"What?"

"It's cute."

"How cute?" He wondered, with a wink.

"Cute enough," she told him.

"I don't know if I wanna be cute tonight. I think I wanna be hot." Sam began to play his guitar and stood up while she watched him curiously. He smiled, briefly, then went into his serenade, "Would you dance, if I asked you to dance? Would you run and never look back? Would you cry, if you saw me crying? Would you save my soul tonight?" After Sam sang _Hero_ by Enrique Inglesias, it was a wrap. Mercedes' legs found themselves just wanting to spread and she declared video time over. It was time to hit the bedroom…

As September came to an end, Mercedes was prepared to move in with Sam. She hadn't gotten around to telling her mother (because she didn't feel like dealing with the backlash), and when she got everything that she knew she wanted to keep for sure into Sam's place, she decided to simply sell everything that she could do without. As the sale came to a close, she gave away everything left and made her way to Sam's truck.

They settled in the living room, both tired and sore from moving things. All of their friends had gone on and there they were, on the couch. "I'm gonna check to see how many hits you got on your most recent videos," Sam said, but he didn't make an effort to move and neither did she. "Are we going to do some more recording this week?" He asked.

"No. I just want to get used to things and relax before the convention," she said. "Are you finished preparing for that? You've been dedicating a lot of time to my singing videos."

"I know how to multitask, Babe. It's all in the bag." He got up and went to check on the videos, finally, as she simply sat down and looked over at the remote. If she stretched a little, it might be within her reach, but… nope... that was asking too much just to watch TV. "Oh my God, Mermaid!" Sam called out.

"What?" She asked.

"There's a producer dude in my inbox asking me for contact info for you," Sam said.

"Huh?" She asked, jumping up and rushing to the computer.

Sam read, "I am sending you this message, in regards to making contact with the sensational singer Mercedes Jones, whose singing videos I came across on your site…" Mercedes read the rest of the message, along with Sam, "Am interested in offering Miss Jones an opportunity to sing in a stage performance and an opportunity to sing on the soundtrack of an upcoming film…"

"Oh my God!" She said. Then shrieked, "Oh my God!" Sam's arms wrapped around her and she fell onto his lap, staring at the screen. "Is this real?"

"He has a link to his website. You can contact him and see," Sam said, squeezing her hips as she leaned forward to click on the link. Sam kissed her neck, right under her ear and told her, "I knew it would happen, Baby. I told you."

"Nothing's happened yet, now," she reminded him.

"It doesn't matter. It will. When you get famous, try not to forget that I believed in you," he teased.

"Ok, I guess I'll try not to forget that whatever happens, I have you to thank." She turned to give him a long, passionate kiss and to rub her nose against his.


	19. Mistakes Have Been Made

**Mistakes Have Been Made**

Jacob was being quite a little bastard. Mercedes couldn't think of any other way to word it. When Sam was at the comic book shop, if he talked to her for a little while, Jacob would hover and remind her that while Sam didn't work for him, she did. Sam stepped to him one day, but she quickly deescalated it, reminding Sam that she didn't have two jobs, just this one… one that had something very important coming up very soon… Sam backed off, but not before reminding Jacob, "She works for you. You don't own her."

Mercedes decided to sign on for a month to month lease when her lease ended in September, so that she wouldn't have a long obligation. She planned on moving in with Sam, but not until after the upcoming convention. So she had a couple of months or so to get that situated. Now, she credited the bastard behavior of Jacob to nervousness about the convention, until this day…

"Once again, personal matters during company time," he muttered as she laughed into the store phone at something Sam said while they were going over the checklist of certain materials that she asked him to grab on his way to the store to sell his books. They were selling better now that it was known that not only the shop but Sam's comics were going to be featured at a convention with Jeremiah Stapp. And Sam was doing a lot more for the store (things he did not have to do but did to take some stress off of her, which henceforth took some pressure off of the store). So, when she heard Jacob's comment, she quickly snapped at him.

"How so, Jacob?" Mercedes asked. He turned red, obviously he hadn't expected her to hear his whine. "It's just that the ONLY reason that you even get y=to bring your store to this event is because of MY personal connection. While I could throw that in your face, whenever I choose to, I've actually been pretty damn humble about it. ALL I asked was to bring Sam and his work into the fold. In all fairness, I could've taken Sam to Jeremiah and left your Bozo the clown looking gag-fro having ass here. But, I think we're better than that, Jacob. So, here we are, and I've handled everything professionally."

She set the phone down and walked toward Jacob, "Yes, Sam IS my man. Yes, I've got his back. Yes, even though he doesn't work here, he is coming along…" Jacob was backing away as she was coming forth, "And if I should so happen to have to talk to him about something, which WAS pertaining to this store, as a matter of fact, and he happens to make me laugh during that talk," she lifted her finger right to his face and he jumped, thinking she was going to hit him, "You don't get to be a dick about it! You could ask me if I was on a personal call, which it is NOT and I don't get onto personal calls at work – I never have; but don't you come pass by mumbling under your breath and muttering because you're salty about me and Sam, for whatever reason!"

The other employees were watching, shamelessly at the standoff. They were amused and interested in how it would turn out. Jacob stammered, "I, I didn't mean to offend you and I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions. But, regardless of our situation and all that I have to be grateful for, which I am, I can't award you special privileges without the appearance of favoritism."

"My fist is going to make an appearance in your mouth if I have to hear one more thing from you about Sam and me. We keep it strictly professional on your time and you aren't going to scold me like I'm some child or subject me to you pouting like you're one!" She stormed off, neglecting the phone in lieu of going to cool off.

Ronnie picked up the phone and said, "Hey, Sam – she went to go cool off. Were you two done with the list? No? Okay, well I can help you check it off, let me grab the clipboard…"

Sam didn't have anything to say to Jacob as he carried the things that he'd picked up for the store, first and Strando and Gavroche accepted them. Sam glanced at Jacob, pretending to be busy doing something, looking like one of those damned James Bond movie extras in the back, just turning knobs for no damn reason. Sam fumed as he went to retrieve his stuff for his table. Mercedes was setting the table down for him when he came back inside. "Hey… what'd he say?"

"Just mumbled that I was being unprofessional again. That was getting old, so I told him about himself and maybe threatened to hit him in the mouth if he kept it up. "

Sam touched her chin and gave her a half smile. "Mermaid, don't say that. If he keeps it up, I'LL hit him." He shrugged when she sputtered out a laugh. "So," he told her, as he looked over his list, "I got all of the stuff you needed and since Jacob decided to be a dick today, here's my receipt." She smiled a little bit, then frowned again. "Hey, you won't be working for this dude for much longer. You've been talking to that producer and let me remind you that you have an appointment with him and his people at the studio when we go to California."

"I haven't forgotten. I just already know from experience that these meetings don't always mean that it's good. There's a lot to be considered, if I am actually going to make it, this time."

"Fergie failed at her first try," he said, and gave her a gentle squeeze on her bicep.

"So did LaTavia Robertson," she said.

"Who?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, precisely," Mercedes said. She sighed and shook her head, "I don't want to get my hopes up, this time. I thought that I was going to set the damn world on fire and I ended up back in Lima. At least LaTavia is about to get her own reality show… like years after the fact…"

"Who is this person?" Sam asked.

"Irrelevant. I was just musing, Sam." She sighed and finally took the receipt as she went into the office, with Sam trailing her. Mercedes sat down at the desk and pulled out a binder to start making the necessary notations so that Sam would be paid back for the items he purchased. "I have a Skype appointment tonight. You're working, right? So, we probably won't see each other at all tonight."

Sam sighed and put his hands in his lap, "I don't go to work until 10…" He started.

"Yeah. I won't get out of here until probably 7:30 and when I get home and wash up and stuff to get ready for my appointment, which is at 8:30 – and who knows how long he'll hold me up. Last time, he kept me for half the night."

"Yeah, I remember," Sam mumbled.

"And you were being grouchy, like that, so I didn't want to bring that to your place," she said. "So… once again, because it wasn't good enough the first time, I probably won't see you tonight."

"Don't be like that," he said, softly.

"He frustrates me," she said.

"Well, he believes in your gift and he wants you to sing for him," Sam said.

"Not him. Jacob. My dad offered me a job at one of his offices, as a receptionist. I've been thinking about it," she said. "I would get paid much more, even though I wouldn't work as many hours, because of how my school schedule is and office hours of a dentist office… but I'll still come out doing better AND have benefits…"

"And… work for your dad. I thought that you didn't like him?" He said.

Her head shot up and her eyes widened, "Why would you think that? He's my DAD! I don't dislike him. That thought never even crossed my mind… ever," she tore the proof of credit out of the invoice book and passed it to him.

"Are you kidding? You've told me that you're terrified of your dad. He's apparently not supportive, mean and hurtful and you haven't had one nice thing to say about him. I think it was reasonable for me to presume that you don't like him," Sam said.

"You presumed so out of pocket," she said, getting up and leaving the office, with him hopping up from the other chair and following her.

"So, tell me something that you like about the guy. Now, I'm curious. All this time, I thought he as the man that you expected to have your back the most who shot down your dreams and when you failed, made you feel like shit with an _I told you so_, instead of an _Its okay_."

"It _isn't _okay. It wasn't. He _did _tell me so. There's nothing wrong with being right about something, even if it's something that hurts somebody."

"No, there's nothing wrong with being right, but there's something wrong with being a dick about it," Sam said.

She turned on him, "Did you just call my dad a dick?"

"I said that he was being a dick," he corrected.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore, but if I did and we were going to continue talking – you under no circumstances are excused with calling my dad a dick," she said, heading back to the salesfloor.

"I said he was being a dick," Sam repeated, muttering.

"I mean, who does that?" Mercedes wondered, as she lied in bed, talking to Quinn on the phone.

"This sounds like a lot of stress talk," Quinn commented.

"Duh, Quinn. If it was simple gab, I would've called Santana. You're my stress call girlfriend."

"Ugh! Rude."

"And my good news girlfriend, though!" Mercedes quickly added. "You're the first person that I called about that producer."

"And how is that going? Because talking about how your boss and your boyfriend are driving you nuts isn't how I want to go to bed tonight," Quinn said.

"I know, Q. I just don't ever know what to do with all of this. Sometimes, I just need to vent. The thing with the producer is going alright. We Skype a lot and talk about possibilities and plans, but I won't know anything for sure until I can get into that studio and meet the people he's been telling me about. And even then, in this business, one false move and you can end your ass right back in Lima, Ohio. I feel like I should be drinking."

"Don't drink. Sing. Take these emotions and put them into song, or sing a song that reflects how you're feeling. Record it, like you've been doing and release it, as always. That's what you should do every time that you're feeling discouraged or something. If you sing and listen to yourself, you'll be reminded at how much you should be going for it."

"I hate how much I love you," Mercedes told her.

"I do too," Quinn said.

"Alright. Go to sleep, Q."

"Goodnight," Quinn said.

Mercedes set up her camera, cleared her throat and began to sing, "She's been down and out. She's been wrote about. She's been talked about, constantly…" By the time that Mercedes got to the end of Take Me As I Am by Mary J. Blige, she was good to go. Quinn was so smart. She posted her video and put her equipment away to go to bed.

Sam wasn't sure if he and Mercedes were doing good today, or not. They seemed to be up and down lately. To be exact, since she started talking to that producer. Sam didn't want to jump the gun about anything, but he was feeling a little bit shunned and he was getting pretty jealous over the guy. Sam didn't want to be that person. He didn't want to do that. He wanted things to be alright between them and when they weren't, he didn't want to be paranoid. But, he kind of was…

He texted her to tell her that he hoped her meeting went well and she never replied. She knew how he felt about her replying, even if all she said was "Ok," at least he would know that she at least knew that he was thinking about her enough to text. -Dustin came strutting out of the VIP room, patting himself with a towel and tossed it towards Sam. Sam ducked and the towel grazed him, but didn't land on him as he grimaced at Dustin. "Lighten up, sweet cheeks. It's just a little sweat."

"It's a lot of sweat. A lot of man stripping sweat and I have enough of my own of that without you tossing yours over here."

"Trouble in paradise?" Dustin asked, to which Sam looked at him shocked and impressed and annoyed all rolled into one. "You seem to forget that I worked with kids for a while," Dustin said. "I mean, I guess you aren't a kid, now, but hell – compared to me…" he shrugged. "I could always tell when the kids were having love battles."

"Uh huh. Well, I'm not," Sam said. Technically, he wasn't.

"You and her are having some kind of problems. Either that or the high has ended. You aren't glowing. You aren't bouncing. You aren't even smiling. You're sulking. Your broody. You haven't been invited into the room all night long…"

"I hate doing this shit, Dustin. You know what I mean?" Sam asked.

"Absolutely… not. I love my job. I make more money in one night than I did in a week as a teacher and the fact that I was a teacher before gives me a boost in popularity. I have former students come in and tell me how much they had a crush on me when they were at Carmel, then pay me to fulfill their school girl fantasies… Why the hell would I hate doing this?"

"We're real people, Dustin. We aren't here to just be somebody's fantasies," Sam complained.

"No, we aren't here to JUST be somebody's fantasies. I'm somebody's fantasy when I enter that room. I'm somebody's fantasy when I step onto the stage. When I leave here, I become the real me and I stay that person until its fantasy time. I'm him right now, telling you to chill out and stop taking things so personally." Dustin waved the bartender over, bought a couple of drinks and slid one to Sam. "To… chilling the hell out."

"To getting the hell out of this place," Sam corrected and clanked the shot glasses together before shooting his. "I'm not gonna last much longer here, dude. I don't care if I have to go back to being broke or go into my savings. I can't hack it here anymore."

"Do what you gotta do. If you leave, my funds'll double, so I support this idea of yours," Dustin said with a shrug. Sam shook his head and went to prepare to take the stage.

She was feeling fantastic! Nobody better not change that, or that would be there ass today. That cover of Take Me As I Am was BLOWING UP, and she was floating on air about all the online love that she was receiving. She'd have to buy Quinn cupcakes or something. Sam texted her when he got off… he was upset. He didn't say it, but she could always tell, even in texts… But, hell, he seemed upset most of the time, now. So, she promised to come over in the morning and she was heading up to his place, at the moment.

When she got to the door, he opened it, shirtless and tired looking. "Sam?"

"Couldn't sleep," he said and pulled her in to hold him. She did, confused as to why he was so… down…

"Do you need anything?" She asked.

"I need you," he told her and looked at her with a smile. She couldn't help but to smile back as he took her hand and led her inside. Maurice was in his cage, swinging on his little swing that she picked out for him for his birthday. When he noticed her, he jumped off and held onto the bars, making noises. "Nope," Sam told him, pointing a finger at him, "She's all mine today, Space Cowboy." Maurice pouted a bit, but returned to his swing.

"I swear, he understands everything that you say," she said. "He never understands when I tell him no."

"He understands. He just doesn't respect you, which I think he's proven by being a groping lil' pervert."

"Learned behavior, I think," she teased.

"Mmm hmm… we'll see how much it bothers you in a lil' bit," he said, throwing her a daring look and raising an eyebrow. She smiled brightly and practically ran to the bedroom. "Mmm hmm, that's what I thought," Sam said, chuckling as he followed her in and shut the door. "Your favorite pancakes for breakfast?"

"Mermaid's pretty hungry," she said and licked her lips. She sat down on the bed and reached for him. When he came to her, she slid her hands up his chest, "I want an appetizer. Why don't you dance for me?" She said and bit her lip… then immediately regretted it when Sam glared down at her and backed away.

"Dance for you?" He repeated.

She shrugged and said, "I thought it'd be good foreplay. You obviously know how to do it. You get paid to do it five nights a week…"

"Yeah. I _get paid _to do it. I don't bring it home," he said.

She threw her hands up in the air and said, "Okay, fine, hell. Why waste that on me when you have horny vixens to share it with all the time." Sam clenched his fists and stepped back. She was pissing him off, now; but she was pissed off, too. She got up, "Just, get some rest. I have to go." He grabbed her and stopped her from leaving. "Sam…" Her voice was warning.

"No, you want it. I'll give it to you," he said and sat her down.

"No, don't waste it on me."

"No – you asked for it. It's only right, right? I mean, fuck how I feel about it. You KNOW that I hate doing that shit, but if it entertains you, who the fuck cares?" He snapped.

"Yeah, because you can tough it out when you're out there, but you can't bring yourself to even give your girlfriend, who you supposedly love even a sneak peak at it, while every horny bitch in the area can see it whenever she wants, for the right price!" Sam's face reddened, but he didn't respond. He started dancing in front of her. "Stop it," she said, not in the mood. But he wouldn't stop, "Cut it out, Sam!" She yelled.

"RIGHT! Because MY body is for you to command, however the hell you wish to!" He roared back at her.

"I thought that it would be alright, since it's ME! I thought that you would WANT to do it, that it would be different… special… SHIT!" She got up and practically ran out of the door, eyes filling up with tears, but Sam caught her by the wrist and she shook her head, "No, no… I'm just going to leave before I do more damage."

"No… Mermaid…" Sam was shaking as he pulled her in and hugged her, "I'm sorry, Babe. I had a rough night at work and when you said to dance, I snapped. I shouldn't have taken it that way. I see what you meant – you thought it would be alright if it was you. I guess it should be… I just… I don't know. I hate it so much it just kinda feels like I might be tainting us if I brought that in here."

"It wouldn't have. It would have been beautiful and special, because we're in love… but now… I don't even want to talk about it anymore and if that place makes you feel THIS bad, Sam… you really need to get out of there, ASAP." Sam nodded and wiped her face. "But, I definitely shouldn't have said what I said to you. I hate that I did that. It's like… I turned into my parents for a moment. I was hurt, so I attacked you and we can't do that to each other, Sam. We can't fight about things this way and blow up on each other. I feel like we've been having problems and I can't pinpoint them." She bit her lip.

"Your friends. Your parents. My job…" he said.

"My friends and my parents? You hardly see my friends and I never bring you aroun my parents."

"This is what I mean. We can't even have a discussion about this," he said.

"If the discussion is you saying that all of our problems are on my end…" She started.

"That's not what I said, Mermaid. Santana and Sugar are hateful towards me and you excuse it, but if I even so much as mention a problem with them, you're ready to bite my head off."

"You misunderstand them, at times," she excused, yet again. "And I tell them about themselves anytime that they have anything to say about you. I have your back, Sam and when you tell me that I don't that hurts my feelings."

He sighed and shook his head. "Okay. Nevermind. Let's just go get some real breakfast. I need to eat."

"I am going to make an effort to do better with the damage control of Santana and Sugar's shit… But, I can tell you now that they're like that with everybody. They're like that with Puck. They're like that with Blaine."

"They aren't like that with Artie. They aren't like that with Mike or Kurt…"

"They LIKE them."

"Why don't they like Blaine? Or Puck? Or me?" He asked.

"I think that Sugar likes Blaine, but Santana doesn't, so he just kinda gets the shit. Puck should be self explanatory…"

"He took a girl with downs syndrome to the prom in a homemade crown because she didn't win prom queen. He's a good guy, even though he can be stupid, sometimes."

"I like Puck, just fine, Sam," she said.

"And what about me?" He asked.

"If you have to ask…"

"No, why do they dislike me?" Sam clarified. She shrugged her shoulders. "I haven't done anything, have I? I mean, they acted that way before we even really got together, but I don't know when I'm upsetting you."

"I wouldn't tell them, if you did upset me. Hell to the no… Sam… don't worry about that. _I_ love you…" She stroked the hairs on the back of his neck, as he drove.

"I want to quit my job."

"Then, you should."

"We're about to move in together. I can't do it right now," he said, miserably.

"We don't have to…" he gave her a look that silenced her. "Sam, if us living together is going to be the way that you've been lately, I don't even want to do it."

He sighed, "I won't let that happen again, Babe. I promise."

"You PROMISE? Because I take promises very seriously, Sam."

"So do I. I love you, Mermaid." She smiled and sat back, in the seat.

They were in line, ordering, when Sam's hands kept touching her hind parts and she giggled, playfully telling him to stop. "It's reflexive! I seriously don't realize that I'm doing it until you say something!" He told her. They laughed, they waited, they grabbed their bags and as they were about to head out, Mercedes froze in place and her eyes went wide. Sam turned to see Milzie, sitting down at one of the tables and a darker, bald man seated with her. "Hi, Milzie," Sam said, and nodded once at the man. The man was looking right at Mercedes and she looked completely terrified. "You must be Mercedes' dad."

"Mercedes, who is this person speaking to me without being properly introduced?" The man asked, not even glancing Sam's way.

"You're Quinn's friend, aren't you? You were at the party…" Milzie said, squinting her eyes in warning at Mercedes.

Mercedes found her breath and managed to quickly push out, "Dad, this is my friend, Sam. Sam, this is my dad, Dr. Bishop Jones."

Sam didn't too much care for that "friend" title, but the fear on Mercedes' face helped him not to get too angry about it. He extended a hand and said, "Nice to meet you, Dr. Jones."

"Is that the same hand that you shamelessly pawed my daughter in a well crowded public place with?" He asked, still looking at Mercedes. Sam retrieved his hand and frowned. "That's not behavior becoming of friends," he said. "But, why don't the two of you have a seat and we get better acquainted?" Mercedes immediately sat down, without question. Sam tilted his head and joined her, giving her a questioning look. She was shaking. Why the hell was she so afraid of her own dad? He supposed he would find out while they were "getting acquainted."


End file.
